There Fell a Stillness
by HappyInLove
Summary: A man who doesn't believe in faith. A woman who may be losing hers. Two lost souls collide in the stillness between hope lost and found. "I think you need this more than I do. Everyone needs a little something to believe in sometimes."
1. The Prophet and the Paralyzed

**I don't own. Obvi.**

**Chapter One: The Prophet and the Cripple**

_What a day to be alive,_  
_what a day to realize I'm not dead.  
_ _What a day to save a dime_  
_what a day to die trying._  
_What a day to start again,  
what a day, holy Toledo._  
_What a way to say goodbye,_  
_what a wonderful life, now._  
_What a way to survive,_  
_what a day to begin breathing._  
_Bring on the evening._

"All I'm saying, is if you don't use it, you lose it," Emmett dribbled, wheeled forward and shot, missing horribly. "It's a miracle it still works. Don't squander that. It'd be like slapping God in the face."

Emmett never knew the right things to say, so eventually he gave up trying, and said whatever popped into his mind. Somewhere around the time I gave up hoping that nerve endings would reconnect and fire again, even if it wasn't as rapidly as normal, or as well as suggested, Emmett gave up bottling up his questions and suggestions in fear of being politically incorrect, and started speaking.

"You're an absolute idiot," I stated. "How in the world did you manage to run the company so long without burning it down?" Emmett checked the ball straight at my chest, in a way I'm sure he hoped it would transform into a brick or maybe ninja-throwing star; something to maim me. But the basketball could kill me, if timed correctly. Or maybe the ball was too big for that. _Commotio cardia_. If struck in the direct center of the heart, within one or two percent, at just exactly the right instant in time, in that moment between the _thump _and the _bump_, a strike could kill; instantly.

"I'm just trying to think of ways to get you out of this building for fuck's sake, Edward," he sat back as I shot and the swish echoed until the ball thumped on the ground like a lopsided heartbeat. Six beats then silence as it rolled. _Commotio cardia_. "You barely go out in public, you don't talk to anyone except me or Alice or Rosalie, and I'm pretty sure you haven't gotten laid in about…five years."

"I think your exaggerating," I trailed off before becoming agitated and huffing my way towards the ball in three long pushes.

"How old are you?" he asked while doing a wheelie.

"Twenty-three," I sighed. For being alive almost a quarter of a decade, I'd accomplished so much, I felt like I was already seventy eight, at least. I graduated high school at fifteen, started college, graduated by eighteen, had one girlfriend, inherited a multi-billion dollar company, lost said girlfriend, discovered a new mathematical theory, and managed to become a paraplegic before the big two-five.

"And when was the accident?" Emmett continued. I hoped he would fall from his stupid circus act. I threw the ball at the wall and let it patter angrily to a stop across the gym floor.

"I already said I'd go, what else do you want from me?" I shouted. The front wheels of his wheel chair echoed femininely as they clanged on the ground with the force of his giant body straining them.

"For you to not be a giant, egotistical, pity party, cry baby, tool shed," he leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees and glaring at me. In this moment, if there was every any doubt of the roles of the family, Emmett affirmed his rightful spot as big brother. He looked like Dad.

When he was my age, he was forced to take over the family business, Cullen Industries, after the accident. He never wanted it, but things happen, or so they say. Alice was only a kid, so he sent her off to boarding school while I was lucky enough to not have my prayers answered.

"I'll be there," I repeated through gritted teeth. My jaw muscles were probably Olympic athletes in their own rights after my bi-weekly gym days with Emmett.

"I went the whole way upstairs, and you guys are still down here playing?" Rosalie cut Emmett off before sounds could come out of his already opening mouth. He snapped it shut when he saw her and seemed to forget about me completely when he looked at her.

I understood why they were getting married; love. And it wasn't just the regular, 'you're my whole life,' or 'I want to live in your mouth and count your teeth,' kind of love that everyone thinks they have to have, but it was the kind that shut Emmett up mid-ass kicking, and made Rosalie move a thousand miles away just to see him every night, kind of love. I could appreciate it, even if it was an emotion, and therefore immeasurable, and therefore inadequate and unnatural and biased to such a degree it was un-provable.

"It's a miracle," Emmett stood up from the wheelchair he used when we hung out in the gym, to make things fair. Because taking away someone else's legs, at least for a few hours, was the epitome of equality. "Your amazing hotness has given me my feeling back below the waist. My God! It's a miracle!"

"Stop being a jackass and shower," Rosalie shook her head, though there was the tiniest smile in the history of the world hiding on her face. Their love was also the kind that allowed name-calling. "We have to meet the florist in forty five minutes."

"Do I have to?" he whined. The giant, well over six foot, and two hundred pound plus behemoth of a man whined like a fourth grader trying to get out of gym class.

"Go get changed," Rosalie snapped. Wedding planning only made her more charming, in my opinion.

"You could change me," I gagged as Emmett wound his arms around her slim form, and decided I should gather my bag to get away from the disgusting performance. There is something about couples that is utterly disgusting unless you're in one or

"I'm in love with an idiot, you know?" Rosalie lamented and I nodded, even though my back was turned to them. "Hurry, Em. I've already rescheduled three times."

"Alright, I'll meet you in the lobby in a few," I heard him kiss her, in that nasty, lovey, spitty kind of way. I heard Emmett's less than stealthy feet pound towards the showers, and I knew his lack of a good bye was anger.

"Hey, Edward," Rosalie threw a few seconds later. "I had my assistant bring your suit and shoes over a few minutes ago, so it should be hanging in your apartment. Thank you for volunteering your place for the shower."

"It's my honor," I turned to her and lied through my smile. Emmett forced me to offer something nice to my future sister-in-law because he was afraid she thought I hated her. Truth be told, I didn't give a fuck. "What else is family for?"

"And you'll be there?" she continued. I plopped my bag on my lap and pushed myself towards the elevators at the end of the hall from the gym. She followed.

"Where else would I be? It is my place, after all," I snapped.

"Right," she nodded and turned right when I turned left at the end of the extravagant hall towards the elevators.

"Good morning, Mr. Cullen," Ernie, the elevator operator greeted me as I pushed myself onboard. "How'd you shoot them today?" he asked and pushed the penthouse button.

"Didn't you hear? The Lakers were scouting me," I deadpanned until silence filled the small container that traveled up seventy floors. I could deadpan with the best of them. Unfortunately, it wasn't a redeeming quality.

"Guests will be arriving around eight," I stated, almost to no one, as the elevator dinged at my floor. "Make sure the front desk knows and checks each ID with the guest list."

"Yes sir," the middle-aged man nodded as the doors opened. "Have a great day, Mr. Cullen."

I didn't respond because there was no point, so the doors closed quietly, leaving me with nothing more than complete silence in my private floor. Silence and the whir of my wheels against the hardwood floor. That was then overshadowed by the throwing of my gym bag on the floor of my bedroom and the click and routine motions of a record player starting while I went through the motions of showering, dressing, grooming, and being as human as one can be with four wheels under foot.

The caterers and party planners came just as I finished. I secluded myself to my bedroom, though it wasn't really a prison. Floor to ceiling windows for two walls giving a beautiful view of the navy shipyard and water, though you had to peer really hard through the scrawls I littered and smudged the windows with dry erase markers, like a chalk board when I worked on some of my equations or proofs. I only noticed time moved at all because eventually it was impossible to see my writing against the dark sky backdrop. It was comforting though, to sit and stare at the marker on the window, to explain things in another language. It was concrete, theoretically.

"Why are you not dressed?" Emmett appeared as I heard some people arrive and some hired musician started playing on the piano in the living room. "I warned you earlier, Edward. Don't ruin this. For one night, pretend you're not miserable. You might surprise yourself."

"What are you, a fortune cookie?" I snapped. Emmett threw the garment bag of my suit at me and walked out. I could clear a room like nobody's business. That could be added to my resume probably. Algorithms, deadpanning, and room clearing.

I took my time getting ready, though it wasn't hard since it was a lot of extra work. I heard people laughing, crystal clanking, obnoxious storytellers that take over conversations just by being louder than everyone else around them. I tied my tie, black, and pushed it snug against my collar, also black, and wiped my sweaty hands into my black pants. Rosalie knew me well when it came to picking out clothes.

I ran my hands through my hair and decided that was good enough. I felt stubble and I should have shaved, but if someone were to ask my how many fucks I gave about making a great impression, I would answer zero. I gave zero fucks. The bags under my eyes were discerning though and I smiled because of it. No one approaches the cripple to begin with, and no one approaches one that looks like he hasn't slept in weeks.

"I know they say that black is timeless, but I think you're taking it to an extreme," a high-pitched, confident voice floated from the doorway. I turned on a dime, because that's what I do, to find Alice, in all of her knowing, annoying, little sister glory. Though now, I guess it was hard to consider her a little sister, what with her turning eighteen a few weeks ago and everything. A freshmen at university, she was stuck in that pre-adult, the world is sparkles and rainbows, spoiled princess mindset. It was almost disgusting, but maybe because I never had it. Almost like how you think sitting around all day would be the best thing in the world, until you can't walk.

"I read somewhere that it's supposed to make one look taller," I sat up straighter. Alice's dress made a funny noise when she walked as whatever fabrics it had in it swished. It was bright pink, and reminded me of something Molly Ringwald passed on wearing.

"You look handsome," she gave me a small smile after smoothing the shoulders of my jacket. Sometimes I forgot she was an orphan since thirteen, sent away because her brothers couldn't figure out how to deal with her, and raised herself in Belgium with strangers, and when I remembered, it only made me feel worse for hating her; sometimes. She looked like Mom.

"You look pretty," I offered something. "How's the apartment?" Emmett gave her the floor below mine. Maybe 'gave' is the wrong word since we all shared the inheritance, but he offered it, and she accepted instead of the condo in Vale, the beach house in Monterey, the cabin in Idaho, and the ranch in Montana. But at one point, we'd been a family at each of those locations. We hadn't been a family in the floors at the top of Lake Point Towers.

"Good," she muttered and straightened to look over me in the mirror, where she adjusted the top of her dress.

"How many people are out there?" I asked as I snapped my watch on my wrist. It could tell time at depths of submarines, where fish glowed in the dark, and sun stopped pilfering through the water, which always confused me, because it didn't have a glowing face, so it'd never be useful if I decided to dive the Mariana's trench.

"Almost two hundred probably," she dug in her clutch and put on some lip-gloss. I knew that because Tanya applied about thirty-nine coats an hour when we dated. I counted the ticks of my watch as I tried not to be nervous. Forty-three. Crowds were bothersome.

"How long until they all leave?" I sighed and let my head lull backwards on my chair. I counted the times it swung freely before coming to a stop. Six and a half.

"You not having a good time isn't going to make you walk or whatever," Alice ignored my question and snapped her bag. "You don't deserve for your nerves to fix themselves."

"Yeah, because that's what stopping it," I sneered. "Deserving."

"Put a smile on for Emmett," she snapped back. Two hundred and eighty-one seconds into her being in my room and she was already sick of me, and vice versa. "He's done enough for you."

"Right, inheriting billions and working in a corner office and allowing me to work on formulas and theories is benevolence at best," I pushed myself towards the door and waited for her to follow.

"Sometimes you're an idiot," she stated before taking a deep breath and smiling before walking out of my solitude. I took thirteen before I slowly snuck into the throngs of people milling in my rooms.

People who knew my parents shook my hand while I smiled and tried to remember seeing them at Christmas parties as a kid, or even the funeral. People look different in real life and in funerals. Waiters with plates of snacks twirled among the chattering, content, giggling mass. I didn't see what they had because I couldn't.

I finally found Emmett and Rosalie, his hand on her waist, hers wrapped around his back until it rested on his shoulder. They looked like vines; happy vines. I grabbed a scotch. The good kind, that almost made me forget that sometimes life sucked.

"I'd like to have everyone's attention," I clanked my glass and moved so I was near the couple. I cleared my throat when it worked. You never expect it to actually work. A faceless blur of people suddenly came into focus, like realizing you're looking out of the wrong end of the telescope, and I realized they were all staring at me. When I looked at Alice she looked on in abject horror. I peaked at Rosalie and Emmett, and they looked like they'd wheel me off the balcony if I made a scene.

"I've never been a best man before," I started, setting my cup on my knee until it left a little water ring in my slacks. I liked the way it glistened then faded back to the absence of light. "Hell, I've never been a good man before, so I'm not sure how to make a speech." People murmured a laugh, which I appreciated. Three seconds later I started again. "But I would like to offer my warmest welcome to Rosalie Hale, as she embarks on this journey with Emmett, and becomes a true Cullen." Everyone clapped. The woman closest to me did it twenty nine times. "I've known Emmett for, well, twenty three years, I guess. Anyone who can handle him deserves the best happiness in the world. Rosalie, good luck. It's been a wonderful experience, watching you both fall in love and become this couple that has become, at least for me, a true representation of what love and trust should be. To the happy couple," I held up my glass and everyone did the same before becoming a blur once more. I chugged the contents until it burned my throat and pealed at least four layers of esophageal lining away. Rosalie kissed my cheek. There were many parts of this period of time that made me want to vomit.

"Thank you. I know it means the world to Emmett, even if you just bull-shitted an entire room of people," she whispered before wiping away lipstick that wasn't on my cheek. I gave her a smile quickly.

Emmett shook my hand and clapped my shoulder.

"Thanks," he whispered. "It means a lot to Rosie, to feel welcomed with us." I shook my head.

Alice stepped up next, glass of sparkling cider at the ready. I wheeled myself away, because she didn't know Emmett, considering she visited four times in the past five years, and had just met Rosalie once.

I mingled more until I found myself translating the conversation into French because my mind was that bored with drabble about stocks, investments, and pitches I gave no fucks about. For the next two hours I drank two more scotches until I figured I should stop myself since it was illegal to drink and drive. While people told stupid jokes and clamored about absolute nothingness, I invented a formula for figuring out how long it would take for my ice to melt in each glass. About five hundred and ninety three, depending on the temperature of the scotch and how quickly I drank it, which was directly related to the conversation at hand.

People didn't move to leave, and I figured jamming ankles with wheels, or running over toes would be unacceptable to Rosalie and Emmett, so I snuck back to my bedroom after I contemplated stabbing myself in the legs each time someone said the word 'happy'. Even though it wouldn't hurt for the most part, I was sure it'd clear the room.

"What the fuck are you doing in here?" I snapped at some woman sitting on the corner of my bed, heels discarded as she wiggled her toes. "This is off limits to party-goers."

Her head snapped up, moving the curtain of brown hair that covered her face when she was leaning over, and her eyes were wide as she gasped and a hand covered her chest, holding her heart in its cage as a preventative measure. For a split second I felt a little bad about scaring her, until I realized she was sitting on my bed.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered and stood quickly. Her hair bounced around her shoulders as the waves shimmered in the low light of the lamp on my nightstand. "I didn't realize," she trailed off and pushed hair from her face. "I just needed a second. I hate these things, and I hate heels, and my feet were killing me. I'm sorry."

I liked her dress; black, simple, Audrey Hepburn. I liked her eyes too; warm like when a match burns to your fingertips.

I looked at her heels, and I could feel the pain, hypothetically.

"I don't have that problem very much," I offered as she gulped awkwardly. I liked the way that sounded and looked. "My feet haven't bothered me in a while." A small smile stretched across her lips. My brain worked on cosine and tangent equations to map them. She pulled at the necklace on her chest, holding the pendent I recognized as a patron, and sliding across the gold chain. Twelve times. I felt her eyes on me, so I pushed myself to the other side of the room.

"I'll just get out of your way, I'm really sorry," she repeated. I watched her wince as she slipped the offensive shoes on again, giving her at least four more inches on her petite frame. "I liked your speech though. It was nice, for someone who has never been a good man." I smiled and felt my chest move with a chuckle. It felt weird.

"Are you Catholic?" I offered as she played with her necklace again as she bent over and grabbed her clutch from my bed. It was small, and I wondered what would fit in it. One saltshaker and a small creamer bowl, one key and six Masterlocks.

"What?" she asked absently, following my voice to my new position near the windows. "Oh, um, sometimes."

"Sometimes?" I was confused.

"Yeah," she nodded, gazing past me at the reflection of tiny numbers on the windows. "Sometimes."

"How can you be sometimes part of religion?" I pressed. "Do you just pick and choose? Or just celebrate holidays with candy? Or is it just when it's convenient?" My tongue was Niagara falls, and my words were verbal barrels, and I wouldn't survive the fall. But then again, who did?

"I believe in a lot of things," she gave me a smile; as if it were something she was accustomed to doing regularly. "Sometimes faith is just believing in something, sometimes."

"Right," I nodded slowly, twice. "And Jesus could make me walk."

"Weirder things have happened," she offered.

"A prophet among us," I mocked her.

"You asked," she insisted. "I'm under the belief that religion is like your private parts, you keep it to yourself, and don't go around showing people. What do you believe in?" I watched her approach me. Her legs were long, and I liked them too. She didn't look at me, but maneuvered so she could read the numbers and try to figure out what it was.

"Nothing," I stated, matter-of-a-factly. I was nonchalance. I found a paddle and was swimming away from that agonizing drop to nothingness.

"Nothing?" she asked. "Not even numbers?"

"Well, yeah, obviously," I shrugged and loosened my tie because it was making it hard to swallow when she smelled like peaches and strawberries.

"There you go," she straightened and turned her head towards me. I counted the movements of her muscles in her bare shoulders. They were the color of ivory, like my piano. "I'm sure there are lots of things you believe in. Like I said, I'm Catholic, sometimes."

"It doesn't make sense," I stated again. She was winning.

"What does?" she smiled again. Six times already.

"Convert me?" I asked as she realized we were just sitting and standing in my bedroom. It's a shame, when someone becomes aware of things like that. I offered a way out, a challenge she'd have to decline.

She turned towards me and searched my face. Her eyes moved thirty-three times in the course of twenty-four seconds. It wasn't until she threw her clutch on the bed that I realized I gave up counting after that instant. I also realized I was on the edge, and the fall didn't seem so bad.

Her brown eyes now seemed to lean more towards syrup, the thin kind, like almond flavored, and her eyebrows creased as her lips grew thinner in determination, so I started a new formula as I gazed between all of her features. She rubbed her hands together, almost massaging them. She held them up in front of my face before moving them to my temples. I flinched, and she faltered, but only for a second. I couldn't remember the last time someone touched me.

"You're touching me," I stated weakly.

"Shh," she hushed me.

The hands were warm, slight, soft. They pressed my ears gently as her fingers spread and moved in my unruly hair. Her eyes stared right into mine until they made me uncomfortable. My equation disappeared when her thumbs started making circles on my temple. Fingertips trailed along the nape of my neck, then traced my brow line, my hairline, my eyelids. Slowly she pulled her hands away, and for some reason I hated my inability to describe, I missed them. She cleared her throat and straightened herself away from my level before wringing her hands slightly.

"Well, try it out," she smiled. Seven. I tried to stand, but my feet wouldn't move.

"Sorry, not this time," I laughed.

"Not this time?" she asked. I lifted my leg and let it slap back into place. "Oh, I was supposed to make you walk?"

"Weren't you trying to convince me and convert me through a miracle?" I was again confounded, and that made me frustrated.

"No," she laughed. It was breathy. Her hand pulled on the necklace again.

"What were you doing then?" I watched her pick up her bag from my bed and walk towards the door.

"Reaffirming _my _faith." With that she waved and walked out of the bedroom, closing the door lightly. When it opened I heard a swell of people's voices and light piano music, before it was quiet again.

I sat there for seven thousand, four hundred and fifty eight seconds before I moved to change. I didn't care what was going on outside. I stared out the window and counted the blinking lights of radio towers. Once every three seconds. Two thousand, four hundred and eighty six blinks. My mind replayed the fourteen minutes spent with that woman over and over again. Each time though, her smell and the sound of her laugh became more distant.

I climbed into bed, determined to set my mind on something else, and opened one of the science journals I occasionally edited or proofed. One hundred and twelve pages later, Emmett knocked and came in my room.

"Everyone's gone," he sat on the edge where the girl was once sitting.

"Finally," I muttered and returned to reading.

"Thanks again, I know it wasn't easy for you, and I know sometimes me and Alice are rough on you," he started. I'd heard it before so I just kept reading. "But we just hate seeing you like this."

"Paralyzed?" I interjected.

"You're the only person that care about that," he shook his head as he pulled at his own tie because the subject often strangled him. "Was it as bad as you thought it'd be?"

I thought about the mingling, the speech, the elevation of anxiety and the whoosh of quiet of my attempted conversion and smiled. Twice for the night.

"Worse," I shrugged. Emmett laughed. It was booming.

"I'll see you tomorrow for your fitting," Emmett slapped my leg. The only reason I realized was because I heard the thud.

"Alright, after physio right?" I set my alarm.

"Yeah," he nodded and walked towards the door. "Oh," he patted his jacket pocket, then his pants before pulling an envelope out of his back pocket. "Someone left this for you, or at least I'm assuming it's you." He handed me an envelope that had written in delicate curves: _To the Best Man_.

"I'll see you tomorrow," I stated, pushing him out as best I could. He nodded and walked out with a smirk.

I tore open the paper and poured a tiny chain and coin shaped piece onto the magazine I folded over my lap. A tiny note flittered with it.

_I think you need this more than I do. Everyone needs a little something sometimes._ _-the Worst Prophet Ever_

I picked up the chain after reading the note seven times. A saint stared back at me. I didn't know what they did, or how to use that thing, but I ran my thumb over the face and letters. I unhooked it and put it around my neck, pulling it and moving it twelve times, just like the girl. I watched it rise and fall against my chest with each breath. Twenty-one breaths.

I didn't believe in anything, but the faint idea that this once touched that girl made my head a little woozy.

I opened my nightstand and took out one of my sleeping pills. Then I took out three more. I turned off the lights and felt foreign, with cold metal on my chest.

I wanted to take it off, but that seemed inappropriate, so I let it squeeze my ribs against my mattress until my lungs were pancakes. Which didn't seem so bad, with visions of almond-flavored syrup eyes slathering my dreams.


	2. The Unhonorable Maid and Unbest Man

**Chapter Two: The Unhonorable Maid and The Less Than Good Man**

_Jesus is just a Spanish boy's name._  
_How come one man got so much fame?_  
_To enemies, it's pointless to anybody  
_ _who doesn't have faith._

_When my blood stops,_  
_someone else's will not._  
_When my head rolls off,_  
_someone else's will turn._  
_And while I'm alive,  
_ _I'll make tiny changes to the earth._

"You haven't been working at home, have you?" Carlisle asked as I flopped back in my chair. I felt sweat on my neck but I let it slither down my spine without wiping it away because inevitably I wouldn't feel it when it got low enough.

"I've been meaning to," I trailed off and took a gulp of water. That was an almost lie, which made it almost acceptable. "Been busy with the wedding and everything."

"Right," he nodded four times and agreed with me, though he knew I was lying. "You know I can only help you as much as you want to be helped, right?" I stared at his crisp blue eyes. He looked like Rosalie, blond and soft. I hated when he looked at me like that; fatherly.

"Yeah," I murmured. "I'll see you next week." There was a little bit of guilt there; it was heavy and felt like a chest cold. Like having to cough in the middle of a test at school, but not wanting to be that person who hacks up a lung during the true/false segment.

"I'll see you at the wedding," he stopped me. "I sort of have to be there to give the bride away and such."

"Right," I nodded as he did. Four times. "I guess I have to hold the rings and such."

"Don't forget to work on what I told you," Carlisle called after thirty-four taps of my finger against my thigh. I nodded, four times, and went to the elevator to shower for the fitting Emmett was dragging me to against my will and better judgment.

One flip and three needle adjustments of _London Calling_ later, I was showered and begrudgingly ready for hell in a bow tie. I sat in the lobby of the building, absently rubbing the saint around my neck with Carlisle's words running through my mind in a circle, like a carousel where the lever's busted and it just keeps gaining speed like a children's top. But that simile had another simile in it, so I doubted its validity. No matter how much I worked out, did physical therapy, I couldn't alter biology or science.

I watched the door open and close, causing rainbows to form from the light through the window. I tried to make vectors and equations to make a rainbow the length of the room. Halfway through Emmett came. I sat there for five more minutes while I figured it out. At five twenty eight the sun would be at the perfect location, if the door was held open about the width of a foot, and the glass was bent to form a seventy-one degree angle.

Jasper and James were with him, so I already felt out of place. They talked and caught up while I maneuvered through people's legs. Jasper arrived earlier this morning straight from Texas. He and Emmett played college football together at Tech before the accident. That was pre-accident Emmett, and now, with his former teammate here, post-accident, CEO, adult Emmett reverted somewhat. Darwin would have a field day.

Jasper was a professor there now, though with drawl like his I suspected it took all class just to take roll. James worked with Emmett, and we'd grown up with his family, the St. Claires. I never found an appreciation for him as a human being who inhabited the Earth with me, but I might be biased since he used to give me wedgies and help Emmett break my shit.

It was easy to be quiet when they talked the whole time. I took turns taking their sentences and taking out the prepositions to see how different they would sound without all that baggage. Seven blocks later, the retelling of freshmen and half of sophomore year, and seventy-three seconds of waiting to cross intersections, we got to the tux shop.

"When am I going to meet this lovely dame my best friend is getting hitched to?" Jasper threw over the door of the changing room towards Emmett. I could have said the same sentence in half the time without sounding half as stupid.

"As soon as her bridesmaid's get here. They're trying on their dresses next door, and then we're going to go grab dinner," Emmett hollered back. I knew they all finished getting dressed before me, but I kept going at it. I felt like Mighty Mouse most of the times, giant up top, puny on the bottom, when I had to lift myself around the changing room with just my arms. I heard them being measured and adjusted. If I went slow enough they might have to go to dinner without me, and then I'd sneak home.

I took a peak in the mirror and made a note to shave at some point before the wedding. I didn't bother lying to myself with the idea of getting more sleep.

Emmett knocked on my door and asked if I needed help, and I felt like Mighty Mouse when he was just a regular mouse again.

"Hey baby," I heard Emmett great who I assumed to be Rosalie. Introductions poured forth outside and I adjusted my tie.

"These dresses look great," Jasper encouraged the bridesmaids as I rolled out of the changing room.

"And here's my best man," Emmett cheered and came to stand near me in his matching monkey suit. I played with a button on my jacket. Rosalie was dressed in normal clothes, but beside her stood three women in deep red bridesmaid dresses, tied with a black sash around the middle. They ruffled slightly and were knee length. I recognized a pair of long legs. I also recognized another pair of legs. I felt bile.

"Edward, I guess you know everyone here except for Bella," Emmett pointed towards the girl from last night. I scanned Alice's face, then Tanya's, and finally the girl's. It was like a collection from Hell.

"The number's guy," Bella smiled. I restarted my count and started naming the muscles associated with that action.

"The girl who hates heels," I shook her hand and remembered the way she held my head. I took a peak at her feet and saw her in Converses and smiled.

"That's my Indian name, but Bella is good enough," she dropped my hand. I switched to listing the nerves that helped her smile in that way. It was safer to think of things like that.

"Edward, it's been a while," Tanya grabbed my attention. I could count the layers of lip-gloss. "How have you been?" Thirteen.

"It's been an interesting few days, but other than that, same old, same old," I snuck a peak at Bella but she was adjusting her sash thing around her waist. Her hair covered her face again, just like it did when she sat on my bed. I liked the way that sounded in my head, and wondered how it would sound out loud. 'Bella in my bed.' For someone who was as short as she was, her legs never seemed to end; the closet thing to the embodiment of infinity I'd ever seen. But I was an asymptote. Infinity never touched, no matter how far you traveled.

I was asexual. I might have been worse than asexual because most of the time I didn't even bother to have sex with myself. Bella in my bed. That made me nosexual. Been that way since the accident. Every morning I was greeted with a salute, and I ignored it. Bella in my bed. 1/infinity. I think it was the way her boobs looked in the dress, or the way her legs still looked amazing. Mostly it might have been the soft skin of her shoulder. Maybe I had just been alone for so long anything would be attractive and my hormones were backed up.

I looked at Tanya. I remembered thinking she was beautiful, like a model. I didn't graph her.

Bella in my bed.

I hated being limited by being a man. Integrals are definite. The probability of having sex…with anyone…was like 1/infinity.

"Your turn to get fitted, Edward," Emmett pulled my chair from behind. I was almost thankful to be away from her. Everyone turned towards the mirror to watch as the tailor sized me.

"So, which one of you beautiful women do I have the pleasure of accompanying down the aisle after our fair friends are wedded?" Jasper offered a lazy smile as he sized up his options.

"That'd be me," Alice danced over towards him. He grabbed her hand and kissed it. I took cues from Emmett as to how a big brother should react to such a thing, if we had been normal and whatnot. His jaw clenched. Eight muscles; that was it.

His question made me think about whom I'd be rolling with, and both options made me anxious. If I walked with Tanya, that'd be torture. No one really wanted to spend time with an ex; especially an ex who broke up with you because you were paralyzed.

Being paired with Bella didn't seem much better. This girl was something I couldn't predict, something I feared, and more than that, she was hot as fuck. I doubted she'd want to be stuck with a guy with no left feet when it came to dancing. She was the embodiment of dividing by zero.

"And my maid of honor is Bella, so she'll be with Edward," I tuned back into the conversation at the mention of my name. I tucked the hormones away and went back to reworking and explanation of infinity.

"How is she qualified to be that?" I turned after than man finished. Tanya, James and Jasper were talking as Alice took a phone call.

"Bella is my best friend," Rosalie gave me a weird smile at my inappropriate question. It was the kind a mother gave her child when he asked why a friend was fat or something. Being around people, other than my family, for the past few days had taught me that I was vastly inappropriate. Most of the time Alice, Em, or Rosalie ignored my rudeness, even though I didn't think I was being rude, just cautious.

Her answer categorized Bella as vapid, simple, easy, stubborn, and innately worried about things that didn't matter, by pairing her on a deep level with the woman marrying my brother. Unfortunately this didn't compute. I was Freud's uncanny. "I've known her since high school."

That made Bella twenty-one, since Rosalie was twenty-one, and they must have been in the same class. That meant that for somewhere around seven hundred and thirty days, I inhabited a world without her in it. I knew her for exactly 0.023304591% of my existence, give or take, depending on the seconds and leap year days.

"Right," I nodded, four times.

"If it helps, I've never been a maid, and have very little honor, so we'll make a perfect pair," Bella offered, running her finger gently across her sternum. One and two thirds inches below her clavicle. I felt what she was missing; it sat tucked under my undershirt, shirt, vest, and bow tie.

"Let's get out of here, you boys look dashing, but I'm starving," Alice thrust herself back into the conversation as I contemplated telling Bella that she made numbers appear when she was around because my mind didn't want to think of anything else. It was probably for the best Alice stopped us before I put my foot in my mouth.

"You get your boys all finished up, and we'll meet you in our normal clothes at the restaurant in a half hour, alright?" Rosalie let her head rest on Emmett's shoulder. Bella would have to be a good foot and a half shorter to do that to me. Or my nerves would have to attach themselves back together, a lot quicker than they were. Five years, less than a sixth returned. Bella would be in a wheelchair herself before I could let her rest her head on my shoulder.

"Good-bye, Beautiful," Jasper kissed Alice's hand as he bowed. "Until later." He inhabited the world 5,258,880 and counting, give or take a few thousand, minutes before Alice was born. In distance, he could have run 350, 592 miles, if each mile took fifteen minutes. Or roughly taken a stroll around Jupiter, the biggest planet in the solar system, one whole time, and be over a fourth of the way with another lap. But that was variable, to which way he was walking, either with the rotation or against it. Either way, from the muscles in Emmett's jaw, I knew that was too long.

"Lay off," Emmett pulled Jasper and pushed him towards his changing room before glaring at Alice, who seemed to be pumping blood into her cheeks at an alarming rate. James just shrugged and waved. I figured it'd be fun to give Bella one last glance, because sometimes one more glance puts things in a clearer light. It was like having half an equation erased.

I turned and went back into my changing room.

I heard them leave, I heard them come back, and I hadn't moved to get undressed.

"Edward, hurry up," Emmett banged on the door.

"Sorry, it's hard to move with the pins and everything. You know I hate being pricked," I lied. I had watched the tailor poke me on accident at least twice.

"Right," he yelled. "Our reservation is for five minutes ago, do you mind meeting us when you finish?"

"Yeah, I'll be over soon," I smiled victoriously. He was an idiot to trust me. I'd rather run my fingernails against chalkboards than go eat with Tanya. I sat for a little longer, until the bell jingled twice at a distant interval, signifying they had left.

I would be paired with Bella. Awkward wasn't the right word, but it was the perfect feeling. After Tanya, my first, last, original everything, combined with the addition of a lightweight, titanium axeled, seventy degrees of adjustment optioned wheelchair, lacking social skills only increased by a dependency on pain and sleeping pills, brought on by a vast array of crippling emotional issues, and an IQ that made quantum physics bedtime stories, it might not be surprising to find out that my dating, personal, and social life didn't excel. And I gave zero fucks.

I hung up the tux and left it in the room as the tailor had instructed before going back out. Bella sat on the bench facing the trifold mirror.

"I wish you could have just heard my thoughts," I smiled at her, hoping maybe she did pick up on the abundant strengths I had to offer. She stood up and pushed hair from her face.

"I'm not sure who's hosting SNL this weekend," she stated. Second smile.

"What?" I felt mine fade. No one ever left me this confused.

"That wasn't what you were thinking about?" she nudged her head towards the door, signaling for me to follow. I appreciated her exaggerated social cues.

"No," I stated. "What are you doing here?"

"I offered to wait for you," she held the door open. "Because from the shifty look you had, I figured you would try to make a run for it." I stopped on the sidewalk and looked at Bella when she stopped along with me. My useless diver watch told me it was about the time for the sun to be the perfect angle for optimal refraction. It seemed like optimal time to see strands of Bella's hair painted golden, and her eyes freckled with honey. I wanted to see both.

"I don't really run much," I shrugged. Bella scrunched up her face before letting out a breath. It was like she emptied the vital capacity. If I took the initial reserve volume plus tidal volume and expiratory reserve volume, I could figure out how many liters she just altered the atmosphere of the world by, to the nearest liter, if the rest of the world held their breath at the same moment.

"I'm sorry," she sighed. I checked my watch again and started in the opposite direction.

"I've got something to see," I paused at the intersection. "I'll be at dinner in a few."

"I said I was sorry," she followed. I watched her from the corner of my eye. She looked so comfortable; jeans, sneakers, collared flannel shirt rolled up awkwardly. No heels in sight.

"You didn't offend me," I calmed her fears. That was all I needed, pity.

"Well you missed the turn for the restaurant, and I'm not going without you because they'll think I pissed you off or something, which it seems like I did," she huffed as she tried to keep up to me. I checked my watch and went a little faster. Bella followed until we reached the entrance to my building. I stopped. I wish I had done something cool, like skidded sideways like the good guys always did when parallel parking, or had the nerve to race behind her and make her fall in my lap, because I never wanted someone to be impressed by my limitation more than in this moment.

"You didn't," I stated again. She followed me through the doors. "Just, I had to do something and it's almost time. I have to know if I was right. I didn't think someone would wait for me, it's never happened before. So just sit," I wheeled around, looked at the door and back towards the lobby chairs. I moved one a few feet in one direction and placed it in the middle of the room. "Here, and I promise I'll go to dinner in five minutes if you just stop being you. You make it hard for me to think about the right numbers." A vector rendering of her hips started to work through my mind. I would bisect her vector any day.

"Ok," she whispered and sat down. The smell of vanilla followed her when she walked around me, with a hint of strawberries. That made my brain stop thinking about numbers. I watched her throat move with a swallow, and her lip tucked into the top as she bit the bottom. Lips and hands and hips made me think about anything but numbers, and that made me uncomfortable. I turned and moved back towards the door before I could really make us both uncomfortable.

Anxiety decreased as I forgot about her for a second and wedged something in the door to open it, then pushed the other the opposite way. The light blinded me for a second and I checked the angles, guessing as well as I could with no instruments. I was two minutes early, so I sat beside Bella and stared at the opposite wall.

"I'm sorry if I offended you," I muttered after forty-nine seconds of quiet. "Sometimes I do without realizing it."

"I noticed," she smiled. Three. A faint rainbow appeared near the floor, about two feet long and a few inches thick. "I like it though, your lack of a filter. It's refreshing."

"It's a lack of care for social customs due to self-imposed hermitism and developed social anxiety due to egotism," I corrected. I felt her eyes on me and I wanted to move the patron on my chest, twelve times, but I couldn't. "And because I have these wheels, no one stops me. But I actually have one hell of a filter, just about the wrong things."

"If only you used your powers for good," she mused. I liked the way it felt, to have her eyes on me, like the weight of the Mariana's trench at a depth where my watch would be worthless. The sun kept setting and three more rainbows appeared.

"You made rainbows," Bella whispered with some awe tinting her words. I liked the way that sounded too. And I still liked her legs. I liked the individual parts of Bella because I could define them. Cumulatively she was like trying to find a word you can't spell in the dictionary.

"I made refractions and broke apart the sun's ray into the color spectrum," I stated. "Did you really go to high school with Rosalie?" Curiosity loomed. Silence only made me think harder, so I opted for mindless chatter, which seemed less than mindless to me when it was concerning Bella.

"St. Agnes Catholic High School for Girls," Bella said, leaning forward so her elbows rested on her knee and her head fit in her hand. The curve of her spine was graceful. I wondered what it would feel like, to run my fingers along each protrusion. "You know the stereotype about Catholic school girls?" I nodded. She must have felt it because she didn't turn around. "Rosalie invented that."

"And you were there to help?"

"I didn't help with it at all," she sat back as the rainbows inched upwards. I believed her because it seemed ridiculous to lie about something like that.

"Why?"

"Like I said, I believe in some things, sometimes," smile number four emerged. I liked the curve of her lips. If it'd been skewed, it would be a variation of the slope of her back. A second later I felt a familiar hand at the back of my neck, and the movement of cold metal running up my sternum until the weight of the patron rested outside of my shirt.

"How'd that get there?" I wondered with confusion, hoping she bought it.

"Voodoo," Bella offered with a smirk. I didn't count that in my smile tally, because it was sexy. "I like science. I like movies. I like music. I like books with pretentious titles. I like grass and the feel of it between toes and against necks and cheeks. I like moments when light is broken apart and made visible. But I don't have any answers for you, and you won't be able to figure me out."

"Everything is solvable," I promised. "Why did you tell me all of that?"

"I figured your mind wouldn't let you, but if your lips decided to ask me out, I'd do you a favor and give you a way to think of something for us to do without blowing a gasket or discovering a flaw in the Pythagorean theorem." Her hand was still holding the pennant, and I gulped. There were more freckles on one side of her nose than the other. But they were light, so no one could notice.

"I don't date people who've been saved," I stated, expelling it from my mind. "It hadn't crossed my mind to ask." That was the truth. Sometimes you can get so used to being alone, it doesn't even cross your mind to hope to have a change at maybe, slightly asking someone on a date.

"Me neither," she returned and let the metal drop against my chest. "We'll be strangers again after the wedding."

Most of the rainbows disappeared as the sun crept behind the building across the street.

"What is this, anyway?" I asked, letting the subject drop. Someone came inside and altered the entire thing until the wall was just a wall again.

"Saint Thomas," Bella explained, standing and returning her chair. "You promised, now lets go before Rosalie kills me."

"Blame it on me," I fingered the necklace before putting it back under my shirt and against flesh. "She hates me already."

"It _was_ your fault," she walked beside me down the street. Sexy smirk number two. Same muscles, different results. Away from the vectors, I counted her footsteps. Thirty-five.

"Right," I nodded, four times. "Who is Saint Thomas?"

"What would be the fun in telling you?" she smiled. Four and a half. It was harder to determine which smiles weren't sexy anymore…two and a half sexy smirks.

"I could Google it," I promised.

"But that wouldn't tell you what you want to know," she explained as we listened to seven beeps of the crosswalk sign.

"It would tell me exactly what I need to know."

"It would tell you who he is, but not how he got to be hanging on your neck."

We were both quiet the rest of the blocks towards the restaurant. We were an hour late, but we slowed our pace as we approached.

"You make number's fly through my brain. Normally they're just there, lackadaisical, but you make me count more and faster," I finally blurted. It was inevitable. "When you left last night, I was fine. When you were there I created twenty-five equations. And when you did…whatever you did, it all stopped. No thoughts."

"Really?" Bella questioned with a little cock of her head. I wondered how it would feel to hold her head as she had mine, if the calluses of my palms from always pushing wheels would make me numb to the softness. I held the door for her. "Is that good or bad?"

"I'm not sure yet." The restaurant was crowded, but we found everyone easily, and I started replaying each thing Bella said, and each time she looked at me, dissecting it for hidden agendas and underlying meanings. I was McCarthyism; she was Arthur Miller.

"We were ready to send out a search party," Rosalie hugged Bella but refused to look at me. "If you'd been gone any longer we would have suspected something, if you were two different people." I watched Bella sit near her best friend, beside Alice. I sat in a place that made it hard to look at her.

"Why wouldn't you think that we just had loud, passionate sex in the tailor shop?" Bella took a sip of water as if she hadn't just said what she did.

"Because this is Edward," Emmett slapped my shoulder, which bowed under the pressure. "I'm surprised you lasted as long as you did without killing him, or vice versa."

I looked at the menu and counted the vowels. Seventy-eight.

"Right," Alice agreed. She nodded twice. "He's probably thinking of ways to plot the trajectory of bumblebees right now. We won't hear from him all dinner."

"And you're you, Bella," Rosalie laughed and hugged her again, wrapping her arm over Bella's shoulder.

I couldn't look at Bella.

"What took so long anyway?" Tanya asked. I didn't look at her. Her overtly polite tone only made everything worse.

"I watched Edward singlehandedly dissect the invisible and make a rainbow," Bella explained. "Very cool. I've never seen someone do that, and sort of understand it. I wish I could say it wasn't worth making ya'll wait, but it totally was." I pictured the sound waves of her laugh and how they wove into my ears.

"That sounds like good ole Edward," James patted my shoulder, mimicking Emmett. I figured I couldn't be degraded further, but occasionally I am wrong. Well, no, that's not true. I'm only wrong about people. I was right about the refraction. "How'd you do it?"

"I tilted the door of the Tower, and when it was at such a displacement between the lines within the glass, I did my best to guess how the door beside it would have to be pushed forward, to alter and offset those lines, but just enough so the prism was created," I explained halfheartedly.

"Ok, I'm already bored," Alice caught me before I could continue. I nodded, four times, and went back to the menu. Being shot down by Rosalie and Emmett left me used to not talking to anyone about anything. It wasn't harsh, they just didn't want to hear about it. They started talking about things they wanted me to also join in and talk about, but I didn't have the heart.

I offered sentences throughout dinner, but nothing else. Enough to keep them from talking directly to me, but not enough to attract attention. I was a floor lamp.

I spent the rest of dinner pushing food around and counting the words said each minute by each person and creating averages. The final line of the problem scrawled in my bedroom worked it's way through dinner, but left me empty still.

When Bella spoke I listened though. She didn't say much, but she laughed when she should and she asked questions when she could. I learned she was Rosalie's sidekick, and it seemed like that was it. Of course I wasn't one to know what best friends did. She was still in school. James tried to talk to her, but she evaded.

It finally ended. I cursed Emmett, and swore to ignore him again as soon as possible. I figured that with a wife soon enough, I wouldn't have to worry about him trying to make me get out, forcing me to talk about nothing. He tried to know what was best for me. I was happier making refraction.

I kissed Rosalie goodnight and she smiled at me.

"Thank you, for being a part of this. I know it's not easy for you," she whispered. I ventured a projection of hearing that condescension about twelve more times on the wedding weekend.

I wanted to tell her that I had no choice, but it seemed inappropriate. I wasn't sure, so I kept it to myself.

Alice, Rosalie, Emmett, Jasper and James started towards the bars. Bella excused herself claiming work in the morning. They didn't invite me because they knew I wouldn't go. Ironically I appreciated that.

"What did you solve during dinner?" Bella asked as she tucked her hands in her pocket and shifted from foot to foot.

"It would take eleven million, nine hundred and twenty-five thousand, seven hundred and ninety-two ice cubes that were in our glasses tonight to cover the floor of the Buckingham Palace," I muttered. "But I'm not sure if that includes steps or not." Smile number five, because it was three fourths sexy.

"I really did like the rainbows," she hailed a taxi. "When I was little, my grandmother had a crystal lamp, with little crystals that hang down the shade. It made a little disco on the carpet in the afternoon."

"I'm sorry I made you late," I shrugged. It seemed like the right thing to say.

"Why?" she opened the door as a cab pulled up. "It was really cool to see. It was a lot better than eating dinner and talking about taffeta and losing weight for pictures."

"I think you are in your ideal weight class for your height," I complimented. "Over or under would be unhealthy and isn't recommended by the Surgeon General and most all nutritionists."

"I'll try to remember that," she took a breath. "What did you just solve?"

I wanted to tell her I thought I perfected my map of her lips, where the limits and everything worked perfectly, but it also seemed inappropriate.

"Remember the filter?" I gave her a smirk. I didn't think I knew how to do that. I didn't know I could do a lot of things.

"The one you're severely lacking most of the time?"

"Yeah, well I found it."

"Pity," she crinkled her eyebrows. "I'll see you at the church. Have a good week, Edward."

I turned and left as the cab pulled away. In eight days, Bella would be a stranger again. I wasn't sure if it was a good or bad thing.


	3. The Princess and the Professor

**Chapter Three: The Princess and The Professor**

_Hard times as we go_  
_we know what times will change._  
_I talked to Jesus,  
_ _Jesus says I'm okay._

_While she says she's on her own  
_ _I'll be pacing on the phone  
_ _Taking numbers, taking names._

_Awful, sick and tired of the game_  
_and it's cold and it's cold and it's cold when you're near._

_I talk to Jesus,  
_ _Jesus, everyday._

"Are you sure you have the rings?" Emmett asked me again as he shifted uneasily. I watched him pull at his collar and tie. The thrush of people's voices in the pews made me anxious enough to realize he'd done it nine times. I'd already done it fourteen.

"Yes," I nodded, four times. I patted the breast pocket of my jacket and felt the little box. It weighed nine point three ounces.

"Right," he sighed and started talking to the priest. I sat back and tried not to look at the well over seven hundred people watching us, mingling, talking about their own weddings or mundane atrocities like income taxes or the state of the Cubs. Forty-two homeruns, four point one eight ERA with a dismal slugging percentage of point four hundred and eighty-one. I went through the roster thinking about it and began creating future goals to make each percentage higher.

I tried not to think about the past week, and how it dragged on like tires melted to road. So I started thinking about the stats of the '87 Cubs, and restarted configurations.

I only left my condo to go to the lab. I didn't go to the bachelor party. I didn't go to Carlisle's family dinner. Irrationally I figured Bella would be there, and I probably couldn't look her in the eyes considering I'd spent the rest of my week, approximately twenty-five hours total, fourteen point eighty-eight percent, thinking of her. It wasn't her in the 'I wonder if she's liked to get lunch,' kind of way, but more of the 'I can picture her mouth on my zipper,' kind of way. There were eighty teeth on my zipper. It would take four of Bella's to pull it down. I hypothesized how many teeth her zipper had. Figuring how much torque and work I would exert and over varying speeds.

By Thursday, I couldn't get work done, and I was probably more unbearable than normal. I might have gone through the five stages of grief. I was angry, I was in denial, I was depressed. Or three of the five. More than half. Unless the stages included fantasies of a woman I'd just met. Then I had four of the five.

Thursday night I sat staring at the Chicago skyline covered with numbers, painted in symbols from my equation, as I twirled my new best friend, St. Thomas, twelve times. Bella knew me for fourteen minutes, and left me a necklace for no reason, and now wouldn't tell me why, and she wouldn't stop having those legs that were infinity, and she wouldn't stop smiling seventy-four percent of the time, and she liked rainbows that I made, and she knew I would never ask her out, and she knew she would never go out with me, but she told me to anyway. Anger, check. Denial that I liked her, check. Those legs, check. Depression, right.

So I sent her something. I got the guest list from the front desk from the wedding shower, and I stalked her like crazy. It wasn't because I wanted to ask her out, or see her again. It really wasn't. It was because I wanted my mind to stop thinking about things about her. I'd never had this problem, ever. And it was a problem that knew no answer, no limit. So there was frustration in the anger. My therapist would have applauded my emotional awareness, if I still went. I was appalled for having a crush. Appalled and alarmed. Appalled, alarmed, and anxious.

I found a prism. A simple, third grade science experiment kind of prism. I put it in an envelope, and I wrote her a note.

_You can make your own rainbows._

It was simple, polite, and a nice offering, because I knew she liked rainbows and it was the best sort of guy thing I could think of; I mean, that's what some people do, they flirt. Only this wasn't flirting. I just wanted to get rid of her, have her turn me down, pull away, something. Her telling me I had a chance was driving me crazy.

Friday afternoon, when I believed Bella was having a torrid affair with a man who did karate and smoked his own meats after hunting in the Adirondacks while teaching orphans Chinese and dancing ballroom while flexing biceps the size of watermelons with a giant smile because he didn't have a brain that never slept, insomnia for that reason, and well, all of what I wasn't, I was at peace, once again, solitary, conquering my hormones, not being crazy, with logic and rationale. Until she sent back the prism.

_They're better when someone makes them for me.  
_ _I like pizza, sushi, and Italian. Ice cream is good too._ _-Bella_

I read that note almost a million times, until the words became meaningless and I'd memorized the weird way she made some of her t's, the cursive z's and printed s's, and the simple way her B curved, like her spine and lips. And then everything I'd done to get her out of my mind burst forth and spilled all over my room.

"Are you sure you have the rings?" Emmett grabbed my attention again after talking to James and Jasper about something to which they all laughed.

"Yes," I nodded, four more times. I'd nodded twenty-four times to the same question, before patting my chest twelve times.

"I can't believe this is happening," Emmett muttered with a distant smile as he gazed at the stain glass windows behind the priest. I remembered the scene. I counted each piece, according to color, the last time I was in that church. Where we were standing, our parents had closed caskets.

"The irony is rich," I nodded, four times.

"I don't really see it," he fluttered with his tie. Dad never fluttered. Not even nervously. Not ever ever.

"You met Rosalie because I didn't die," I sighed. Emmett looked at me curiously, in a way I'd never seen him look before, something between confusion, understanding, and guilt.

"I never thought of it like that," he nodded, twice. "Now I'm glad you didn't die for another reason." He smiled, that big, oafish one I remembered from when he taught me how to hit a ball at the batting cages, and I actually did.

"You have reasons?" I caught part of it and wondered why he was glad. Our parents were dead, because of me, and I lived. I blamed me.

"I guess," he shrugged. "I never really thought of them in a list. But you're my brother. I know I'm not as smart and can't talk about cuckoo math stuff, but you'll be good for a kidney or liver one day, right?" he laughed, so much it boomed. Everything boomed in a church though, and almost condemned.

"Probably not since I'm on so much medication," I answered honestly.

"Well damn, I guess I'm glad you got me Rosalie then, or I'd be out of reasons," he punched my shoulder. I wasn't sure if he was serious or not. I leaned towards serious, even though he was laughing still from his belly and smiling like when we got lightsabers for Christmas and beat each other to pieces like piñatas. If I were him, I'd probably be serious.

The music started then. Emmett straightened and took a big breath and gulp. He had our dad's jaw. One that tightened with nerves and seemed to hold authority.

I tried to figure out how to optimize acoustics in the giant church. As the music played, the grid formed and sound relay's were mapped in such a way that I hoped to find the perfect seat.

Tanya walked first and I remembered sleeping with her. It didn't make me feel anything, so I went back to mapping with no worries.

Alice was second. Her hair, with gentle waves and black, almost completely encompassing all other colors instead of missing each, reminded me of our mom. She kissed my cheek and then Emmett's before taking her place next to Tanya. For some reason, I didn't mind her as my sister.

Unfortunately, as I went back to counting steps towards the pulpit, Bella appeared. It was unfortunate because someone shouldn't be so beautiful and almost unaware. I wish I could have solved the problem with the space-time continuum and paused that moment, so she was always there, and obtainable, and away from reality, and I could, for the first time in a long time, have a little bit of hope. I wish I could have swallowed as well, but my throat felt dry, and like part of it was defective. I wish I could have told her that I thought she was beautiful, and I liked when she rubbed my temples and that she believed in some things, sometimes. But I went back to doing things in my head. Because here I wasn't nervous.

I guess I blatantly stared at her, the whole time she walked, because I memorized her eyes, and her eyelids, and her nose, and the slopes of her cheeks, and how I was sure there were faint freckles unevenly on both side of the bridge there, and the way her lips pulled into a little smile and she fought to push it away and stay stoic. She smiled at me, straight at me, when she took her spot next to Alice. It was a slight smile, but the kind you see on someone who is genuinely happy. None of that grinning with all of your teeth showing, the whole way to your ears garbage; just contentedness. It was nice. But that was inappropriate. I closed my mouth and tried to swallow again. I hadn't thought of a number until that second. Three. Three smiles already. One wink. There was one wink when she caught me looking at her. I felt a weird movement the whole way near my ears when I smiled back at her. I probably blushed too. She did. It was pretty.

I'm sure the rest of the ceremony was amazing and awe-inspiring like all weddings should be, and I'm sure people cried and clapped and I gave Emmett the rings at some point before they kissed, but I don't really remember that. There were one hundred and twelve candles behind Bella. Her hair shimmered eight different shades at different times. She put her hand to her chest nineteen times.

Rosalie kissed my cheek as Alice and Bella hugged Emmett at the same time. His stocky, giant frame eclipsed them both.

"It's nice to meet you, Rosalie Cullen," I shook her hand. "Take care of him." She gave me a watery smile as if I'd just told her we had to pull out her molars as initiation into the family.

"Thank you, Edward," she cried and hugged me tighter. Her dress was heavy against my body and itched. She went down the line and kissed the best men before kissing Emmett once more. He dipped her and the crowd clapped more. It sounded like white noise. For so long I forgot that they were there, like voyeurs and I suddenly felt dirty. They walked down the aisle towards the waiting cars. James and Tanya followed, arm in arm. Then Jasper and Alice, with him giving her a little twirl and kiss on the hand. I felt like I was on a plantation, or Dollywood, but without the knockers. I wondered what Bella called her boobs. That led to me graphing them, which led to awkwardness.

"Shall we?" Bella's voice surprised me, because it was something I thought I'd forgotten. I hadn't.

"Is there any other option?" I asked weakly while sneaking a peak at her chest. Fucking Dolly Parton.

"We make a break for it, be first to the reception, and get the biggest pieces of cake?" she smiled. Four.

"If only Rosalie wouldn't personally break my legs for ruining the ceremony," I muttered. Bella laughed and grabbed the elbow I stuck out for her to grab. I pushed myself down the aisle with Bella on my arm, and tried to concentrate on not hitting her toes. I'm sure she was already hurting from her heels.

"Thank you, for the prism," Bella whispered as we got almost to the doors. I was three strokes to freedom. That sounded like an innuendo, which I almost wish it was, but that was inappropriate, and slightly blasphemous.

"You sent it back," I grumbled.

"It's not fun to have it so easily. I liked your rainbows," she promised.

"I don't go around making rainbows," I scolded her somewhat. I screamed masculinity.

"Me neither," she smiled. Five. She let got of my arm and we threw rice as Emmett and Rosalie climbed into their limo. I followed the wedding party to our car and slid in last. Bella was beside me. Right beside me.

"God, I'm tired already," she moaned and let her head rest against the back of the seat. Lots of pale neck was exposed. I wondered what the skin would feel like there, where it dipped into her throat, with her jugular underneath, beating lightly. I wondered how it felt, and my fingers itched to slide along it. But that would be creepy.

"The day just started," Alice shook Bella's shoulders until her head lulled forward and they both giggled. Jasper pulled out champagne and handed us all glasses while James made a toast to the wedding party. I sipped quietly while everyone joked around and laughed. Music started playing and the girls started dancing a little. There was lots of giggling.

"God, Bella, you have to come over and help me figure out what I need to survive in Chicago," Alice gushed. I eagerly waited for Bella's answer. She'd be a floor below me. Not that it mattered.

"I barely have time to breathe," Bella laughed. "Between school and work, I'm pretty swamped."

"You can take a few hours to hang out!" Alice continued.

"I'll let you know," Bella looked at me. I wish I would have thought to put my arm around her. That's what guys did; normal, functioning members of society. "I'm waiting on some plans to come through."

I started playing with my empty glass and looking out the window. We pulled up to the hotel where the reception was being held. I tuned out whatever they were talking about because I was still stuck on Bella. It was ridiculous. She was like throwing in another set of limits on an integral. My life had grown exponentially more complicated since her arrival. She was dividing by zero.

The driver put my chair by the door and I hopped in and pulled my legs with me. I watched Bella wince when she stepped out onto the street. She straightened her dress and looked around the crowd that was forming. She looked beautiful, framed in the setting sun. She was beautiful in the dark. I wondered if I was allowed to think things like this, so I stopped.

I'd never used more adjectives in my whole life, then since I met her.

"Looking for your date?" I offered, hoping the ninja hunter would show up any minute to put me to shame with his alarmingly perfect white teeth that were perfect squares, and didn't have too much or too little gum showing, and had dimples and a jaw that could slice through concrete.

"What? Oh, no," she blushed and grabbed her purse. "I was just looking for Rosalie. I didn't have time to find a date."

"Right," I nodded, four times. We moved silently towards the ballroom. The giant French doors opened to the outside garden, which was lit with tiny lights and the glow of the dim dining room and dance floor. Tables were sparkling with silverware and red and white roses. Everything felt crisp, but warm.

"What were you solving at church? You looked lost," Bella asked as we approached the party table. I wondered who looked found in a church.

"The best place to sit for the best acoustics," I smiled because she was looking at me. "It had a lot of good possibilities, because of the high roof and everything." Now was usually when Emmett cut me off completely, so I stopped.

"Have you ever sat alone in a church and listened?" Bella turned to me eagerly. I shook my head, five times. "You can hear everything, and nothing. I've always wanted to take a radio in and listen to music. It'd be like a concert. Where should I sit?"

"If you put the radio in front, you should sit right in the middle, by the thirteenth pew," I answered, recounting to see if I was right. I was.

"I meant for dinner," Bella laughed and I realized we reached the table. I pulled a chair out for her and took the seat beside her. "Thank you. I'll have to remember that."

"If only that church would put in a few acoustic walls or something, it would sound amazing, if they put them in at the right spots," I continued. It was the longest two-sided conversation I'd had in a long time.

"I doubt a lot of people go to church to listen to music though," Bella amended, and I realized it was a silly idea.

"Right," I nodded, four times. I started fiddling with my napkin because the crowd was growing, and it was nerve racking. I counted the plates and figured how many forks were in the room. Two thousand, nine hundred and twelve, considering everyone had two.

"Are you alright?" Bella whispered, leaning towards me as everyone quieted and Emmett and Rosalie came in. I smelled vanilla and strawberries again and took a lungful greedily before gulping and nodding. "You're lying. Give me your hand," she ordered. The furrow in her brow was pretty. That was an awkward thought. Furrows weren't pretty; but hers was.

I placed mine out, under the table. Bella took it and put it in her lap, palm up. I forgot about the world when my hand got so close to her naughty lady parts. Yeah, naughty lady parts.

"When I was little, my grandma told me everything ran through the hands. A clenched fist was a clenched mind," she whispered. She pushed my fingers until they were laying flat and put pressure on the 'v' of my thumb and first finger. She moved in a circle there. I felt a little calmer, but it was probably because she was touching me. My hand was almost holding her hand. My hand was essentially touching her naughty lady parts, if her dress wasn't there. I tried to swallow again, but it was too hard. I didn't want to move, because if I did then it might end. I felt her trace the calluses on my palm from pushing myself around. "Feel better?" she finally turned to look at me through her eyelashes. There was a tiny smile, peaceful and hopeful. I felt worse, if anything.

"Yes," I muttered because my voice couldn't go above that. Bella didn't push my hand out of her lap, but traced the lines in my palm absently after looking towards people talking about Emmett and Rosalie and beginning to eat. She traced one to my wrist where she rubbed circles a little while longer before taking a deep breath and pulling her hands away. I took it as a cue to move mine away from her naughty lady parts, begrudgingly. I felt like all my blood was in my ears, and someone was beating out the message of an impending attack on the war drums of my ear.

The food was served and Jasper and Rosalie pulled her attention away as the table started reminiscing. I just pushed food around. Time drew closer for me to give another speech, and I felt horrible. It was torture. Bella stood beside me to talk about Rosalie and the trouble they got into as kids, about moving with her to Chicago when she met Emmett, about how happy they would be and all of that. It sounded nice. Emmett and Rosalie hugged and kissed her and thanked her. Everyone clapped.

I would have been ashamed to hold Bella's hand now, because they were sweltering, sweating like a lava lamp.

"It's not fair, that I have to follow a speech like that," I started talking when designated. Everyone laughed. Bella shrugged and smiled. Six. I tried to remember parts of my speech but seven hundred and eighty three pairs of eyes stared at me, and Bella smiled, which made me forget my name. "When Emmett told me he was getting married, I asked him which website he ordered his new bride from. Anyone that knows him knows that the idea of one woman conquering him was just, well, unbelievable." Everyone laughed. It sounded like a soundtrack to a show. "Then I met Rosalie. They look at each other and love each other." I started to feel the weight of the eyes on me. It wasn't enjoyable. I choked on some water when I went to sip from it. "I don't believe in love, or anything of the sort, but when I see these two, I can't help but think it must exist. I am honored, to be able to call Rosalie my newest sister. I wish them the most happiness in the world, because I can't think of anyone else who deserves it."

Everyone clapped. My head was twirling and I couldn't see straight because my tie was choking me. Emmett shook my hand and hugged me. Rosalie cried and kissed me again. They moved towards the dance floor and I wiped my forehead with the back of my forearm because I was sweating like a water faucet. I was the pitcher of lemonade on the picnic table in July.

"Deep breaths," Bella whispered to me. I tried to take her in, for strawberries and vanilla, or just one of them, to calm me down, but I didn't want to make a scene. It felt greedy, and wrong, and that didn't help the situation. My hands shook slightly as I fisted then loosened, fisted and loosened, fisted and loosened, fisted and loosened. "Come on," she pushed her chair out and I followed. No one noticed as glasses started to clink for the couple to kiss. They looked like love. The divorce rate for their age group was fifty-eight point nine percent.

Bella stepped out onto the patio overlooking the gardens and cool night air greeted me thankfully. I tried to stop counting each second of my speech, or the stuttering or the inadequacy and think about living and breathing.

"Christ, it's like you're having a panic attack," she muttered. "I hate big crowds too. But it's over, and the speech was really good. Who would have guessed you had a sense of humor?" She laughed. I snorted. It was all I could do. Partially because I couldn't breathe right around her, but mostly because I knew she was right. "We'll just sit out here and breathe. They won't miss us for a few minutes." I wondered how much I would miss her for a few minutes.

I watched her take a seat on the wall and slip her shoes off and wiggle her toes in the night. The lights out here were only the stray rays of those in the ballroom and the little lights in the bushes that were like lightning bugs, framing her in sparkles. It did nothing to help me breathe. She was quiet, and didn't rush me to calm down or anything, which I appreciated. Most of the time Emmett yelled.

"Why wouldn't you think I had a sense of humor?" I questioned, taking deeper breaths. Bella looked peaceful gazing at the sky, neck exposed again. It was the color of creamer.

"You don't smile much, or talk much, or laugh much" she sighed and looked back at me. Her eyes were black now.

"I don't have much to say," I shrugged.

"But you do," Bella scolded me this time. "You think about so much stuff, it's so interesting. And eventually you do talk."

"But you think I'm attractive and intelligent," I offered. "Or else you wouldn't touch me so much and send back the prism." It was science, and what Cosmo said to be true.

"Maybe I'm just curious," she substituted. I considered it and acquiesced.

"Why me? I mean, I clearly would lose in Darwin's survival of the fittest." I was a male peacock with no cock; no flare, no pizzazz on my ass to attract a female.

"We all have defects. Yours are just a little more obvious than mine. But look at this," she pointed to a cut above her knee, about two inches long. There were three or four similar ones radiating around her patella. "I'm defective too."

"Mine is a bit limiting," I suggested, hoping she understood everything I tried to pack into those words.

"We all have flaws too. I'm limited, in ways that might make you run for the hills. Just because you're in a wheelchair doesn't mean I don't like your smile, or the things you say, or when you make rainbows." Again, she looked up and took a breath.

"I wouldn't run if I could," I whispered. Bella smiled. Seven. I felt like my lungs were pancakes again.

She tucked hair behind her ear and I wished I had thought to do that.

"Thank you, for getting me out of there," I sighed and felt normal.

"Your welcome. Any excuse to take those devil shoes off." I laughed with her, because it was easy and right and I hadn't thought about variables and exponents in a few minutes.

"Do you really think I'm funny?" I grinned.

"Sometimes. I think it's a simple funny though, that is actually anything but. Like, when you told me how many ice cubes it would take to fill Buckingham Palace. I just like the way your mind works." If she only knew, she'd probably insert her foot in her mouth.

"Knock knock," I smiled a little wider and shuffled in a little half circle.

"Who's there?" Bella grinned. I liked the way that looked. Especially when she put her head in her hand and rested that on her knee and looked at me, and only me. It's nice to feel big like a planet sometimes, and her eyes were like the moon, and all she could do was look at me because that's all the moon does.

"Would you go out with?" I started.

"Would you go out with, who?" she returned.

"Would you go out with me, please?" I gave her the best pout I could. It probably looked like a scowl, or better yet like I was going to vomit.

"With a sense of humor like that, how could I say no?" Her laugh was winning, even though her little hand went to her mouth to cover it slightly.

"You give me time to think, and you give me time to figure things out, so thank you," I sat beside her, pulling my body. "Don't get your hopes up." I lifted my legs so I could sit a little more on the wall.

"Too late," she rested her head on my shoulder.

This was a moment I wished would be the end of a chapter, and then the next page would say _six months later_ and we'd be cuddling on the couch, her hand in my lap, and hopefully my hand on her ass, or maybe I'd come home and she'd have diner ready and tell me about everything that happened to her and I'd nod and act upset if she was, or I would be taking her to a fancy dinner and she'd be wearing a pretty green dress and I wouldn't let her wear heels, no matter how much she thought she had to, to look gorgeous, because no matter what she was wearing I'd think she was a knock-out, and I wouldn't eat the fancy dinner, and she'd think I hated her, but really I'd be too busy choking on three words I'd want to tell her to even think about swallowing anything else. And I'd tell her when we fought. And then she would say it back.

But that only happens in books and movies, where things can be montaged. Life, unfortunately, isn't a John Hughes montage.

"You're confusing most of the time," I smiled as wide and as big as I could, even though she wouldn't see it, I couldn't hide it. Sometimes things get so heavy, you have to smile, even if you're not a planet anymore, and even if Emilio Estevez isn't going to be dancing around with Anthony Michael Hall. _You mess with the bull, you get the horns_, right, Paul Gleason?

"And you're the most readable man on the planet," she snorted. It was cute. "I had to make you ask me out." I asked a girl out. That thought bowled me over like a feather, and cushioned me like a tree limb.

"I never thought of it, because you're just…a girl, who is pretty, and hopeful, and surprisingly peaceful," everything burst forth and I cringed at the embarrassment in the admission. "And I think way too much and I don't speak Chinese or have biceps the size of produce or teeth that were once on a commercial for _Aquafresh_."

"You think I'm pretty," she sang in a pseudo-mocking tone. I smiled a little more but sat completely straight, again afraid to move, to breathe. I swallowed more barrels trying to go over the Niagra of my tongue.

"Very." I whispered. "Nerve-wrackingly so. What did you mean, when you were reaffirming your faith?"

"I'm not sure. But I felt like a weirdo for doing that," she chuckled and moved against my shoulder.

"I liked it," I admitted finally. "Why are you and Rosalie friends? You seem like opposites."

"We are opposites," Bella affirmed. I slipped my jacket off and put it around her shoulders, because I'd seen it done in movies. She held it tight with one hand and rested her head back on my shoulder. "She's this beautiful, tall blonde goddess, and I'm short, brunette and painfully aware I'm not a goddess. She hasn't read a book the whole way through since eight grade, and I just finished two yesterday. But she's there when I need her, and I'm there when she needs me. It just works. Don't you have someone that just…works?" I thought about it and couldn't name anyone.

"No, not really," I shrugged, forgetting she was on my shoulder. "I don't really have any problems." That was probably a lie. "Well except for you."

"Really?" Bella laughed a little, which was a surprising reaction. "How so?"

"I've never asked someone out before. I haven't done, a lot of things, and it's confusing. I hate being uncertain," I ranted. I felt angry.

"I thought you were quite charming," Bella assured me.

"You're the only person," I muttered.

"Should we go back?" she whispered and sat up straight. I liked the way she looked in my jacket. I wanted to scream, 'no!' but that probably wouldn't be appropriate.

"Probably," I nodded, four times.

"I have to work early tomorrow," Bella stood. I still liked her legs. "So I might leave early." I watched her take off my coat and shiver. I guess I did it right then. I slipped it back on and liked how warm it was from her. Bella in my bed. "But I had fun with you, Edward."

"Me too," I grinned before pulling myself into my chair. I felt like when Mighty Mouse is just a normal mouse again. "I'll see you."

"Definitely," she nodded, three times with an eager smile.

"What if I'm not that interesting?" I asked as we went back towards the reception with obnoxious music and people shouting.

"I think I'm more worried that I won't be interesting," Bella answered.

"That is doubtful," I assured her. We paused at the wide open doors, straddling the line between quiet and chaos.

"And you're a lot more than people give you credit for," Bella leaned down towards me and kissed my cheek. I looked at her with confusion, but a smile. "In case you don't call me, I don't want to say I missed a chance to kiss you. I don't like to waste moments." With that she turned and walked inside. I watched her disappear in a throng of people.

I sat still, as if I'd just been frozen in space, as if someone had just hit pause on me. I still felt the warmth of her lip on my cheek, and traced the spot as if my fingertips would still find it. The numbers came back.

She was going to make my head explode.


	4. The Girl and the Boy

**Chapter Four: The Girl and The Boy**

_Says, she talks to angels,_  
_They call her out by her name_  
_Oh yeah, she talks to angels,_  
_Says they call her out by her name_

_She don't know no lover,_  
_None that I ever seen,_  
_And to her that ain't nothing  
_ _But to me, It means, means everything._

"Carlisle you know I don't want another surgery," I mumbled and scratched at St. Thomas around my neck. I figured it'd be girly to pull on it like Bella did. I also didn't want Carlisle to think I was nervous, as I figured Bella was when she did it, twelve times.

"I wouldn't tell you to have one unless you absolutely needed it, Edward," Carlisle steepled his long fingers in front of his face. He wasn't a physical therapist, but he was the only doctor I trusted. When he reclined in his chair, he looked like my father, when he did business. Casual, shoulder's slumped slightly, at ease with his place in the world and his responsibilities in it. "But you have pressure building up on your spine, and it's only going to hurt the chance of your nerves recovering." I wondered if this is what Atlas looked like when he took a day off.

I didn't want to tell him about the slipping percentages as each day wore on, so I just nodded, four times and gazed around his office. I hated coming to the hospital, but his office was safe. The giant oak desk and bookshelves with awards and pictures on the walls made me feel like it should smell like brandy and leather and cologne and cigars; like success and man.

"When?" I sighed. I'd do it. I'd have another surgery. I'd probably have another and another after that, and another after that, because Carlisle would ask me to, because he was hopeful. I'd have so many, my lower back would need a tramp stamp to cover the scars up completely. I checked my watch as if he'd say that moment and I'd be late for meeting Bella. I was already by five minutes and twenty-nine seconds.

It'd taken three days after the wedding and the kiss for me to work up the nerve to call her. Of course, by kiss, I meant when she put her lips on my cheek for less than a second. When I called it 'the Kiss' like it was capitalized and it's own chapter in a novel, it sounded so much better. On the DVD title screen of my life, there would be _the Birth, the Accident, the Kiss_.

"I have an opening next week before I go on vacation," Carlisle smiled at picked up a pen to write it in his agenda. "The wedding got Esme pretty nostalgic, so she planned a second honeymoon for us. I want to get it done before that, or you'll be hurting by the time I get back."

"Where are you going?" I prodded, not bothering to tell him alright since he knew I'd be there.

"Saint-Tropez," he grinned. I hoped he wasn't thinking about having sex with Esme in that moment, but I suspected he was, and that made me want to vomit.

"Where did you go on your first date with Esme?" I tried to merge the two topics, hoping to sound normal. I was still iffy on my date with Bella. I didn't want to be predictable, but I didn't want to be a fool. It was like fighting the inevitable; like wearing an outfit of meat swimming with sharks. Sooner or later, they're going to get hungry and bite you.

"Dinner and a movie," he went back to writing things down on a pad of paper. "I made a complete ass out of myself by being late, then telling her she didn't look bad."

"How are you supposed to tell her she looked?" I gulped, fearing what I would spout off when I saw Bella. She made my filter as screwy as ever, what with her big, soft eyes and long, long, long, long legs.

"I probably should have told her she looked like an angel, or so beautiful it made my tongue and brain disconnected," he laughed and handed me the paper with all the information for the surgery on it. I checked my watch again; sixth time. Eight minutes and thirteen seconds late.

"Right," I nodded, four times. "I have to go. Goodbye."

"Bye, Edward. I'll call you the day before the surgery," Carlisle threw as I left his office abruptly. I'm sure he was done explaining everything. I tried to get out of the hospital, going through my list for the date. Basically, I was going along the list of what I'd seen in every John Hughes or Bond movie. There were the usual things, like flowers, dinner, a stroll, either a movie or a show, whichever she preferred. I needed flowers.

I stopped in the hospital gift shop and could only find some daisies. Bond would have had roses. He would have strolled straight up to her door, grab her neck and lower back and kiss her until he was holding her up, then he'd say something clever about the weather, carry her upstairs, and give her the best sex of her life. I had daisies. There was probably a penis euphamism there, but I hoped not.

I was late. I tried to think of something to say, but I ended up counting people's feet as I pushed my way towards Bella's apartment. The only reason I agreed to meet Carlisle was because she lived near the hospital. Eighty-three people. I rang her bell; twice. My hands were wringing themselves, or so it felt like, because my muscles weren't listening to my brain. I started reciting the secretaries of state, backwards, with only the odd ones.

"You're late," Bella opened the door. I wasn't sure if she was mad. I was, by twenty-seven minutes and eighteen seconds. I pulled at my collar even though it wasn't anywhere close to throttling me. I started with the Fibonacci sequence.

"I brought you these," I stuck the flowers out awkwardly. She sniffed them and gave me a milder smile. I watched her stick them in her mailbox that rested on her brick exterior.

"They're pretty. Thank you," she smiled. I stared at her from the walk up to her little town home and felt my jaw hanging slack. She looked beautiful. Carlisle's words ran through my head and I was determined not to say that she didn't look bad.

"Your elbows look nice," I offered, cringing immediately. I wanted to shrink into an electron cloud at that moment.

"Thank you," she giggled. "Yours are quite exquisite tonight as well." I gave her half of a smile and looked at her again. I didn't look as good as her. Alice picked out a pair of nice jeans and a forest green collared shirt. She told me I had to leave the buttons undone for a few, so I listened, but it made me feel nervous. I was afraid St. Thomas would pop out of the white undershirt.

"I mean," I cleared my throat and rubbed one palm on my thigh. "I think you're breathtaking and mind-erasingly pretty, elbows included." I scanned Bella, from the skinny jeans where I couldn't wait until she turned around so I could check her out, just like Bond would, to her pretty white, lacey, summer sun-kissed camisole that made her boobs look extremely nice. Her hair was a little wavier than normal, or at least more than I was used to, and it framed her face and shoulders. I wondered if it smelled like vanilla or strawberries more today. Seventy-Thirty combo, probably.

She blushed, at my words, and I smiled because I made her do that.

"So," she started, taking a step from her little porch with once last look at my flowers sitting proudly on display, almost like lamb's blood on the doorpost, to tell everyone I was taking her out, if they stopped by for a chat. "Where to?"

I tried to shake myself out of the daze of watching her body move. I was probably going to trip at this rate, and that was almost impossible.

"Right," I nodded, four times and started beside her. I grew more nervous than before, for no reason. "Dinner?" I asked.

"Perfect, I'm starving," Bella grinned and let out a breath, as if she were holding it for some reason. I realized I wasn't either but I didn't want to start now if I didn't have to, so I pretended I was stuck in space.

I went back through the directions to get to the place I picked for dinner, mapping it out on the map in my mind so I wouldn't get us lost. That would scream dapper and capable.

"You said that you moved here with Rosalie, right?" I started, for some reason hating the easy silence. Bella nodded. "So you're from Georgia too?"

"Born and raised," she laughed slightly. It was like she went back in time, back there.

"Chicago is probably a whole different world," I mused absently. We maneuvered through the street happily.

"It is," she looked around at the pedestrians. "I miss it, sometimes."

"You sometimes have an accent," I told her, because it was a fact. "But only for certain words, at certain times."

"You should see me when I go home," she nodded knowingly. "I sound like I've been growing cotton and plowing fields all the time." The image was hot. Bella in daisy dukes, shirt as a bandana tied around her sweaty body. I gulped, third time already.

"Your family is still there?" I continued my questioning. We passed the park, and the sun started to set, so the street lights started to come on. If I asked her questions, my mind could concentrate on her mouth and her words, and it wouldn't start thinking about how many times she fidgeted with her ring, or how many times I tapped my fingers on my thigh.

"My dad," she tucked hair behind her ear. I wished I could have done that. "My mom left us when I was about thirteen. Couldn't handle the life of marrying a preacher man in a small town."

"The mystery thickens," I grumbled suddenly, stopping by an ice cream parlor and opening the door for Bella. The sun was setting around her again, in that way that it does at the end of summer, when the sun is gone, but the sky is still lit up for some reason; the time between time.

"What do you mean?" she smiled. Five. I pulled a chair out for her and she sat with a nod and tinier smile. I smelled strawberries.

"A preacher means you weren't raised Catholic, or you would have said priest." I moved a chair and sat cattycorner to her. We were ninety degrees.

"It's complicated," she looked at the menu. I dropped it because I didn't want her to ever look as sad as she did at that moment, but not because I wasn't curious. One hundred and thirty-seven taps later I looked over at her. She looked so sad still. I wish I could have kicked myself.

The waitress came a minute later, thankfully. Fifty-three seconds of awkward pause and I was ready to leave.

"Two sweet teas please," I put my menu down because I'd been coming here since I was six and had it memorized. She was way too old to be smiling at me the way she was, so I ignored her until she left. Bella was staring at me like I was speaking Spanish. I might have been. I'm fluent enough in a few languages. "My mom was from Alabama. Spoke with a horrible accent. Baked pies with blue ribbon, county fair recipes. Said the only thing she ever missed was sweet tea. When she found this place, my dad would order it by the gallon for her." I hadn't spoken about my parents in a long time. The story felt think, like spitting up clay. "I think my dad used to call her a farmer's daughter, to taunt her, because my grandpa treated her like a princess." Bella laughed, really hard. I was embarrassed.

"That's definitely right," she agreed. The waitress set down two giant glasses that looked like they could have been liters. I didn't really like it, but I'd drink it to impress Bella. "Your dad taught you right when it came to wooing us southern women." I blushed now, embarrassed for new reasons; sad for the same.

"Can I have the brownie explosion please?" I smiled at the waitress.

"Banana split," Bella gave her our menus, and she left. "Do you always eat ice cream for dinner?"

"Never," I smirked. "But I figured it couldn't hurt to try to look like a badass." I'd gone back to making equations for the various triangles that bisected the table between Bella and I. "So you're a student?" I started a new round of questioning.

I found out Bella was studying at Northwestern to be an artist. I found that to be a weird major. Did you need a major to paint? I didn't want to sound stupid, so I didn't ask her about it. She worked at a bookstore to help pay for school, and as a bartender to pay rent. I felt bad for taking her out on her night off, especially since she had class the next day.

Bella asked me about what I did, and I did my best to explain that I was a researcher for the company I actually owned. It was a weird situation, to say the least. She laughed when I told her I make less than myself.

We got our ice cream dinners with little awkwardness from the waitress.

"This is amazing," Bella moaned. Bella in my bed. Seven times.

"Better than actual food for dinner?" I offered as I had some of my own.

"So much," she whispered. Bella in my bed. I watched her lips on the spoon, on her finger when she dipped it in whipped cream, her teeth around the cherry. Ice cream for dinner was the worst idea I'd ever had, in the history of all of my ideas. "So tell me about Alice. She seems like a handful to have for a little sister."

"I don't really know," I shrugged. I went back to doing exponential equations with random intervals. "She's been gone for almost five years."

Bella was quiet and didn't press, so I ate and tried to count each bite, and each chew. Sixty-eight later I swallowed.

"I think she hates Emmett and I for sending her away to school, after…everything," I trailed off slightly. Bella looked at me with her head in her hand, but didn't push for more. "But we couldn't do anything else."

"I think she loves ya'll," Bella grinned before taking another bite. "She protects you in little ways. You should have seen the pep talk and warning she gave Rosalie. I was a little scared for both of them."

"Alice did what?" I missed the actual piece of information in there. I wasn't good at talking, or listening. But I was good at watching Bella's lips move.

"Gave Rosalie a verbal whipping. She said if she hurt her brother, she would not hesitate to have her killed so it looks like an accident," Bella laughed a little more as she remembered the incident. I just hummed and nodded, four times. "How did your mom end up here, in the big city?"

"My dad went hitchhiking the summer before his senior year of college," I smiled at the story I knew by heart. "Ended up walking down a dirt road in Nowhere, Alabama, and stumbled upon a farm house. My mom took him in for the night, he stayed the whole summer. Asker her to marry him the day he left. They got married the day he graduated, and she moved here because he had to take over the family company." I'd heard that story about nine hundred and sixty eight times in my life. It sounded better from my parents because they would look at each other, interject a story, smile, and my father would kiss my mother.

"Did she like it here?" Bella offered me her ice cream, as if we'd known each other for years and it was normal. I swapped her mine because that's what we were supposed to do, or so I figured.

"She loved him. I don't think she wanted to stay here forever," I sighed, thinking of nights when she would gaze out the window and tell us of a place where there were so many stars, we'd never be able to count them all, and shooting stars lived by the dozens. "Dad said he got her to be his, but he could never tame her."

"I think my dad said the same thing," Bella nodded, once. "I think yours is better than mine." I watched as she tasted brownie and got whipped cream on the corner of her mouth.

Before I knew what I was doing, I reached out to move it. When my fingers touched her cheek, and my thumb touched her lip, my brain caught up with my movements, and I went rigid, as if I'd been struck dead and suffered from rigor mortus.

"Um, you have some whipped cream," I whispered and tried to gulp again. I licked my thumb when I took my fingers away from her cheek and smiled when she blushed and let out a shaky breath. "I think mine does taste better."

"You're not getting it back," she grinned a second later and stuck out her tongue. Like that, the fact that I'd just technically licked her mouth went out the window. I mean, sure there were middlemen in there…and I liked my thumb that touched her mouth…but it was the same thing. That was almost second base.

For the next, I can't even remember how long because I wasn't counting, we laughed and Bella told me about her expert baking skills. I told her about video games. She told me about music. I told her about music. She told me about music. I told her about music. I watched her sip sweet tea through the straw from the side of her mouth, a cute quark. She chewed on it too, unconsciously, at times when I was talking. I didn't have time to think of anything but what we were saying. It was nice, to not feel rattled.

"Closing time," the waitress finally came to our table. I looked around to see that all the other chairs were up and everyone had already gone. I threw money on the table, more than probably was needed, and followed Bella outside.

"The planetarium is closed," I whispered and felt anxious again. My diver watch did me no good.

"You were going to take me to the planetarium?" Bella had a larger than normal smile on her face. It looked like awe and cuteness; like puppies and bunnies. I lost count a long time ago of how many there were, and I didn't care, so I started over.

"Yeah," I muttered. I felt like an idiot. No one wants to go to the planetarium, unless you're seven.

"I haven't been to the planetarium in so long," she sighed, looking a little disappointed. "That would have been fun. Maybe next time?" I noticed it was a question.

"Yes," I agreed eagerly. "We can walk through the park?" I could also place question marks at the end of my statements and hope she wanted to as well.

"Sounds good," Bella followed me.

"So you want to be an artist?" I started, again. Worried about silence, I was on a mission to keep her talking. Partly because I loved her voice and ideas and thoughts, but mostly because she made the numbers stop.

"I think so," she looked up at the sky as we entered the park. Streetlights bounced off of the ceiling of trees. "Even though my dad wants me to follow on in his shoes."

"Prophet?" I asked, trying to sound serious. Bella laughed again and shook her head. That might have been offensive.

"I want to take pictures, and I want to paint and draw, and I want to do a lot of other things. I don't like being limited."

"I wanted to be a power ranger when I was four," I stated, again, flushing with embarrassment.

"What made you stop?" she started walking towards a set of lights, illuminating the ground in the middle of the park.

"I figured out I was good at math," I sighed. "And all of that science stuff was so much cooler than pretending to shoot a laser. I could figure things out, and it felt good."

"That's what painting does for me," she nodded, three times. "You're not like this, around everyone else."

"I am," I nodded, four times as we came to a sidewalk chalk drawing display. No one else listened.

"Maybe," she hummed.

"Would you like to draw?" An older man approached us as we sat on the edge of the pedestrians. I slipped a random bill into the collection box and we were given chalk. "Thank you. Pick any square." I was pretty sure I'd just given a hundred dollars to the United Way or something, but it didn't matter. I handed Bella the box of chalk.

"I think the honors go to the artist," I bowed slightly as she took it from my hand. When I looked up she was staring at me, lips pulled at one corner. I was still holding the box mostly, and I was confused. I should have asked her if she wanted to draw. She looked nice; she probably didn't want to get dirty. I was an idiot.

A second later, Bella leaned forward, moving one hand to my chest, right over my clavicle, almost to my shoulder. There was the vanilla now. Her hand was tiny. It felt nice against my neck, when it got there. Before I could think I felt her lips on mine; in the real way. I felt her intake air and her body lean into mine, her hand holding her up, strong against my body. My hands grabbed the wheels of my chair until I'm sure my knuckles were paler than snow. Bella's lips were so soft, I wanted to open my eyes and see her, to remember each second, but they stayed shut.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. I felt her lip against my own, that was how close she still stayed. I moved my hand to the back of her neck and pulled her the half-inch back to my lips. It was irregular, and far from clumsy. For me it was the best thing I'd done. She tasted like sweet tea, and I finally understood why people drank it so much. When she kissed me it felt like Pop Rocks were buried under each inch of skin, and they were dissolving; popping and crackling like a fire, all over. When I kissed her, I felt languid, yet invincible.

"Wow," she hummed. I felt her smile because I had the same one. Her forehead against my own meant when I finally opened my eyes, which I was against because I didn't want the moment to go away, just like when she touched me, or her head was on my shoulder, I would stare into hers, and that would make me want to keep kissing her, and that seemed inappropriate. Her hand was still on my neck, and her thumb traced my jaw line. No one had ever touched me there, or as sweetly.

"I'll buy you as much chalk if you want," I chuckled gently as my mind started to become coherent and my breathing went normal. Bella laughed and pulled away, just as I opened my eyes. I watched the tiny blush and her tuck a stray hair behind her ear.

"I've never done that before," Bella shuffled. "But I hate wasting moments, and I was worried at the end of the night it'd be awkward. Ok, I'm going to shut up now." It was cute, and I couldn't help but laugh at her a little bit when she covered her face with her hand.

"Pick a square," I repeated the man's instruction and handed her the box. I didn't know how to make someone feel not awkward. I was usually that one. Bella found one in a corner and stared at it for a few minutes. I stared at her.

"What should I draw?" she finally turned to me. I felt a little bad about staring. Sixteen seconds of watching this girl who was completely turning me upside down.

"How do you feel right now?" I asked, wheeling around her allotted square. There was another smile. I wish I had been counting. Of course, suddenly a world of not counting seemed more than wonderful. Gallons of sweet tea and kissing Bella afterwards. Perfection.

Bella knelt on the sidewalk and started making wide arcs. She would wipe a hand on her pants and leave a chalk handprint. I felt guilty, making her put on a show like that, but the look on her face, determination yet unawareness of the world around her, made me want to watch her draw daily.

"Stop watching me," she muttered finally. She pushed hair out of her face and left a little chalk mark. I didn't want to tell her I was trying to look down her shirt, because that was pervy.

"What else am I supposed to do?" I shrugged and put my hands up in defeat.

"Turn around and do some freaky math thing," she made a twirling motion with the chalk in her hand. "I just can't work with you watching me and trying to look down my shirt."

"I wasn't," I answered quickly, my voice going up an octave. "I wasn't trying to, at all. I would never do that." My mouth moved quickly. Bella got a Cheshire cat smile.

"Right," she muttered and shook her head before crossing her arms. I turned then out of sheer embarrassment and awkwardness. I heard her snicker.

I felt all the ease of the evening leave my body. It wasn't hard to start reconfiguring Euler's formula and the implications of Bernoulli and Cote's works on it. I scratched my leg with imaginary numbers to give me an image to look at, or pretend to read. Letters wiggled form side to side and moved gracefully in the way they were supposed to, until I was sure I could make it do something else.

"I was almost kidding," Bella's voice scared me, and pulled me back from something. I memorized the last line of what I was doing before turning to her. "You disappeared."

"I was, um, here?" I offered. "It happens sometimes."

"Twenty minutes, and you get to see the finished work," she put her hands over my eyes and backed slightly. I didn't want to look if it meant she'd stop touching me.

"Open them," she pulled away and I stared back at her. She was eagerly staring at the ground, then turning back to me, waiting to see my reaction. I finally looked at the ground to find a rough work of fireworks, eclipsing the tiny skyline of Chicago, only lit by random lights in windows and infrequent streetlights. It looked ridiculously real, and I was in awe. Then I figured out that was what she was feeling.

"I feel the same way," I whispered. I felt a little, chalky hand slip between my own. Bella stared at the ground and smiled, satisfied. There were smudges of different colors of chalk on her face and neck. We stayed there, staring at Bella's work for a few minutes.

"Do you think I could pick the rock up and bring it home with me?" she turned to me eagerly. "I'm pretty proud of it."

"I heard all the greats started like this. Picasso worked at Disney, doing caricatures, but that didn't go well," Bella giggled and put the chalk on the ground before dusting off her hands once more. "I think it was Monet, or maybe Dali, probably Gauguin who did crayon pieces on cardboard on the street corner."

"I think I read about that," Bella egged me on, and it felt nice; to be egged.

"This is amazing," the same old man who took my money walked around and stopped to admire, just as we were. I took a peak at other artists, and they weren't as good as Bella. I wasn't even being biased because I'd kissed her two times. She was good. "Do you mind?" he held up a Polaroid camera and wiggled it in the universal signal for 'take a picture?'

"Go for it," Bella moved us out of the way while he snapped one.

"This will look great for a brochure or something. Thank you!" he was so excited about chalk art I had to wonder if maybe there was a high demand for it. "With the artist?" he did the wiggle again. Bella didn't let go of my hand put pulled me with her.

"You know how to plan a date, you know that?" she asked as she stepped between my legs and sat on my thigh. Bella in my bed. I didn't even know how that would work, but God, it sounded good. Especially with her so close. And those legs, remember? The ones that go to infinity? I grinned ear to ear as her arms wrapped around my neck and her cheek pressed against my own. I probably looked stoned.

"For you," the old man kissed Bella's hand and gave me a wink. I gave him a confused thumbs-up, because I didn't know the right response to that. Bella wiggled the picture in her hand, to make it develop.

"I guess it's a good thing we didn't go to the planetarium," I followed Bella as she walked towards the end of the park, as if the past few minutes hadn't happened. I liked that she could do that, because I was completely stuck in that park with the fireworks between my ears that somehow spilled onto the sidewalk.

"What did you solve tonight?" she slowed her pace as we followed empty blocks towards her apartment. It was late, and I didn't need my expensive and useless diver watch to tell me that.

"Nothing," I let out a content breath. "Well, until you made me turn around. Then I think I might have figured out a way to add a complex variable to a new measurement in Euler's formula."

"Thank you, for the sweet tea," Bella put her hands in her pockets. One in the front, one in the back with the picture. "It reminded me of home."

"Thank you for being born," I returned. I couldn't figure out how I was alive, and managing to say things like that. It just made her laugh, the same laugh that sounded like the noise big raindrops make on car roofs; the sound sprinkles would make if they had a voice.

I counted her footsteps to her apartment. Five hundred and thirty-one. The only noise was an occasional car and random thumps of the city at night. The flowers were still in her mailbox.

"When am I going to see you again?" she stopped at her door and turned to me, uneasily. I hadn't thought of this part. I had counted on it going horribly.

"Are you asking me out?" I grinned after a second. I wasn't ready for this. She shrugged noncomitantly.

"This weekend?" I tried not to sound too eager. She nodded and bit her lip. I had only seen that three times before. Bella in my bed.

"Goodnight, Edward. Thank you, for everything," Bella kissed my cheek again. It felt just as good as the first time. I waved weakly as she opened her door and disappeared with a shy smile.

I wheeled myself home with a shit-eating grin, and I didn't care. It wasn't until my head hit the pillow that I found the numbers, and the worried mind, and the never-ending equations.

It wouldn't work.


	5. The Meek and the Sick

**I don't own, obvi.**

**Chapter Five: The Meek and the Sick**

_In the evening,  
I stumble my way towards_  
_another daily struggle._  
_It's dark out;  
it's time now that_  
_I pick up my hustle._

_Now here I stand, a broken man;  
__if I could I would raise my hands._  
_I come before you humbly,  
__if I could, I'd be on my knees._  
_Come lay down your hand upon my chest,  
__feel my heartbeat, feel my unrest.  
__If Jesus could only wash my feet,_  
_then I'd get up strong,  
__and muscle on._

It felt weird, being indestructible. But, it was a feeling I was enjoying.

Sometimes, there are moments in life, where you can understand why people jump off buildings. You're untouchable. There are moments that should feel huge, and potentially life-altering, but you miss them, often. I once watched a guy jump straight out of a pool of water up to his chest and land clean on his feet outside of the pool. To him that was nothing, and to me that was everything. I wasn't sure how that pertained to my present situation, so you can make your own analogies.

"You ready to enjoy the good stuff, bud?" Carlisle asked. I didn't see his lips move behind his surgery mask, but his cheeks peaked and wiggled three times. I counted the seconds behind his voice. Twelve.

"Fifteen hours and eighteen minutes until I'm home," I whispered. My mouth was cottony. I wished it tasted like sweet tea, or Bella; mostly Bella. The hair net made my scalp itch. "Make sure you keep the goods covered." I felt self-conscious under three layers of flimsy fabric. Hospitals made me antsy.

"Just think of that pretty girl of yours and count back for me. I'll see you after I take a peak at your spine," Carlisle laughed at me. I blushed. I blushed because he said Bella was _my_ pretty girl. He thought she was pretty. He thought she was mine.

Carlisle was the only person that knew about Bella and the massive crush I had on her. I wondered if anyone still used the word _crush_. It felt like the third grade all over again. Which led to the question of the appropriateness of hair pulling and booger wiping. I would gladly pull Bella's hair, in a completely sexual kind of way. She could pull mine too, if she wanted, and I would not complain. I'm pretty sure that wasn't elementary. I told Carlisle about the first date because I had no idea what to do next, and that was elementary. He was like my dad, and Emmett was on honeymoon. I never needed anyone to tell anything to, until now. That's what girls did, they made you unsure, and condritictorally confident. Fortunately, he knew Bella better than he knew me. Unfortunately, he wasn't eager to tell me much because it would be like cheating. I wasn't a cheater, and I didn't pick my nose.

"Don't let her paint my nails," I mumbled as an odd shaped tool covered my nose and mouth and drugs rushed through my veins, whisking me off to a world of my pretty girl and ballroom dancing. I could ballroom dance like no other, and I was only mildly ashamed of that fact.

There'd been two more dates. Eleven more kisses; three on the cheek, one on the forehead, six on the lips, with occasional tongue and of varying lengths. I wish I knew how many smiles there were, but I always had to start over because Bella had about nineteen different smiles, and counting. So there was the count about the type of smile, then the count of smiles total. I'm sure the chart and graph in figure 1.4 would look amazing if I could keep them straight, but each smile, regardless of type, made me dizzy, and like happiness just drop-kicked me in the chest.

The day after the first date, I felt like I was wearing my intestines outside of my body, and a toothless tiger was gnawing on them awkwardly, just gumming them to death. I worked, read, and went to the gym alone. Still, I felt like I had eaten lead. So I bit the bullet, and by seven twenty-seven the next evening I called Bella. I left a horrible message that made me sound like I enjoyed killing baby seals. I wasn't even sure how, but it was in there.

We went to the planetarium on Saturday. It was sunny, and Bella wore shorts and a shirt with rolled up sleeves. I didn't remember colors, but I remembered her legs. She greeted me by kissing my cheek and telling me my knees looked lovely. I chickened out about pulling her back and giving her a real greeting because I figured it could be construed as assault. I avoided complementing her knees because I would have said something embarrassing, so I told her she looked pretty. She told me about work, I told her about work. We debated the pros and cons of each. I told her about Alice, who had taken to annoying me every day because she was dying of boredom. She told me about growing up with Rosalie. There was almost fifteen minutes of hand holding before the show. Bella sat with her legs tucked under her during the show, knees angled towards mine, with the shadows of the universe blanketing her every curve. I traced her thigh with my fingers, because it felt good, and I wanted to touch it. It was like drawing my own constellations. Eventually they stopped shaking, so the lines grew straighter. Even when the lights faded, I knew Bella was blushing because she ducked her head slightly and cleared her throat. I ended up peaking over at her, on average, every thirty-two seconds, periodically, because I memorized the show a few years ago. Her eyes darted from sun to sun, taking in the projected universe. I found it endearing, the tiny smile and grand eyes she had. When Orion started his attack, my peak revealed Bella watching me this time. So I stared at her, and her at me. She traced my chin, because it was almost as if we were lying next to each other. I wish I had shaved, because I'm sure her fingers would have felt better on smooth skin. But that didn't stop her from kissing me a second after her eyes darted between my lips and eyes. We missed the whole story of Orion, and half of Andromeda. She didn't apologize this time, but let her head rest on my shoulder again. I held her hand and felt like a seventh grader. That night, after a quick dinner at a local pizza place, because Bella had to go to work after, when she stood on her sidewalk in front of her house, toeing the ground nervously, she moved to kiss my cheek, and I pulled her back, kissing her. My hand held her neck and hers somehow moved to my hair, where they pulled and scratched. I liked it. I liked it so much I forgot to breathe, and even that didn't stop me from kissing her for forty-three more seconds. Her tongue felt amazing. I made her breathless too.

Sometimes that's all you really need to know if life; that you have the capacity to rob someone of everything in their body, so they can be sympathetic to how they make you feel. That's what a crush was, right?

The third date was the most anxiety driven one. I took Bella to a fancy restaurant because Carlisle said that's what you had to do because it was impressive, intimate, and I hadn't actually fed her real food yet. I got roses this time. Long stem, no thorns. She wore a little black dress, with black strappy heals, and her hair up, allowing me to look at her neck all night. I wore a tie and jacket, and she told me I looked handsome. I vowed to always wear a tie, because Bella adjusted mine six times. Probably because I kept pulling it when she would look at be from beneath her lashes, or lick her lips, or take a sip of water, or even speak for that matter. When I picked her up she gave me a kiss, on the lips. I was ashamed to keep track, but if this was momentary, I wanted to be able to categorize each one when it was over. I liked watching how she talked, because she contorted her mouth in funny ways to make a point, and her hands sometimes moved when her accent got thicker. She pressed me about research I was doing, and listened. We made out like crazy on her front porch, lit only by the streetlight. It got to a point that Bella was in my lap and my hands were on her waist, and it was as close as anyone had ever been to me in a long time. I liked the way her body seemed to move in slow sinusoidal lines, pressing against me one way, absent the next, back again. Slow. I wish I had kissed her neck, because it looked beautiful, bare and soft. I know it was soft because I traced my thumb along it when I held her lips to mine. For someone so flushed, Bella was able to produce a blush in two seconds. She kissed my forehead. It felt like something my mom did when I was little, or said something silly, but also something reverential. Bella had school the next day, but said she wanted to invite me in. I refused because she had school. Truth was, I was afraid.

Sometimes you're afraid, because there is this person in the world who can take away everything you think you are, and you have no idea what's happening, but you keep pumping the breaks and hoping for an uphill climb to stop the speedometer from getting higher.

Alice picking me up the next morning after surgery was like a dream. It wasn't even a good dream though, just heavy and confusing. The pills and drugs felt good enough to make me forget that I was so sore I didn't want to even think about moving. They also negated any unpleasant thoughts about work, compulsions, counting, thinking, anything. I hated it.

I started counting, but only got to five or six, and would have to start over. I was droopy.

I hated it because I ended up being sick and sleeping on the floor beside my toilet. And I was so sick I didn't care when the phone rang because I had everything I needed to survive, right there on the floor; pills, water, the toilet to praise my horrible insides, cool tile, warm floor mats, my dignity. I could reach the sink for water, I had my pills, I had my gauze and bandages to change my dressing, and most importantly, I had the toilet. The painkillers made my back feel better, but they made me sick. On top of that, it got to a point where I was sure that I hadn't taken painkillers, and I was still getting sick. The floor felt nice and gave me a chill. And I was still droopy. No matter how much I slept, I would wake up and convince myself that a few more hours and I'd be over the bug.

Lots of things happened that felt like a dream, or as if I was watching a movie. I'd lost track of how many times I'd vomited, though I'm sure I was on world record pace. I remembered pills being slipped in my lips with someone urging me to swallow. They sounded nice, so I did. I remembered my bed, somehow getting there, feeling like I walked, which was a huge clue as to how high I was on painkillers and how much I was hallucinating from the fever. Since I could walk, all I could think about was kissing Bella against a wall, and how excited I was to do that. I was going to walk to her house, pick her up, and kiss her until I dipped her, and then I would make a snappy comment about the weather, and have amazing sex with her, just like Bond. My plans were ruined when I was pushed back into bed, though I wasn't sure if I got out at all.

I cursed the invisible forces that made me stay in bed. I had a pretty girl to see.

When I woke up coherently, everything was eerily quiet. So much so, I thought I had just slept for the night and dreamed everything else. I was still sore, but it didn't feel too bad. Light was shining through my windows, but it looked to be afternoon already. I scrubbed my face with a hand to see that I needed to shave badly. I gave no fucks. My phone told me it'd been three days since my surgery.

"Oh, hello," a tiny, surprised voice made me snap my head towards my bedroom door. Bella stood there, clad in the most sinfully short shorts, apron, and tight white wife-beater. I felt like I was still hallucinating, but it felt so much calmer, and less heavy than my drug induced whatever it was. The tingles in my body weren't to vomit anymore, that was for sure. She placed the box on the foot of my bed she had been carrying. I was more excited about the shorts and the shirt and the littleness thereof.

"Hi," I rasped shyly. My voice didn't want to work for so many reasons. I was consciously aware that I was shirtless for some reason, and sitting on my elbows in my room, still with the tingle to vomit, what I'm sure was a stomach full of pill casings. Her hair was pulled up in a tight ponytail, and I liked her neck, again.

Bella approached me easily, setting her phone on my nightstand before handing me a thermometer. She added her hand to my forehead for good measure. It felt cool, and I leaned into it because it felt so good.

"You're still really warm," she tsk'd. "How are you feeling?" I cocked my head at her when she sat beside me, facing me.

"Like I got put in a wood chipper," I answered honestly as the thermometer bobbed under my tongue before she took it away and frowned. I coughed and felt achy. "What happened?"

"You didn't answer your phone," she moved to the box and pulled out a few bottles of water and put them beside me with some sports drinks for added measure. I remembered puking orange, then purple at some point. I was glad these were blue and red. "Carlisle called me to come check on you because Alice wasn't answering her phone." I watched her pull out some medicine, a heating pad, and vapor rub. "I found you sleeping by the toilet. Carlisle talked me through giving you a check up, cleaning your dressings, and making sure it was just flu and not something associated with the surgery. You've been out for two nights."

"Not really how I wanted to play doctor with you," I mumbled and pulled myself so I was sitting against my headboard. I must have been feeling better since I was saying stupid things to embarrass myself. Bella blushed and put the box on the ground. "I'm sorry. Thank you." I felt like shit, just sitting up, but I had to move. "You didn't have to do all of this. Thank you, so much."

"You were a very cooperative patient," she gave me a sly smile before standing and retrieving her box of goodies. I felt like there was so much I should have known about that smile. She pulled one of my sweatshirts out and moved to hang it in my closet, then put a pair of my sweatpants in my bottom drawer, then a dress shirt back in the closet. She caught me staring inquisitively. "I'm sorry, but I borrowed some clothes. I didn't have time to run home or anything."

"You stayed?" I was flabbergasted.

"You were really sick," she shrugged. "I'm really sorry. I slept on the couch. I didn't touch anything, and I just used your washer to do my work clothes. Alice let me borrow some jeans and I watched movies with her at her place. I didn't want to push."

"I should have told you," I whispered. She frowned. First one. "I didn't want you to see me…like this," I motioned to the bed and the medicine on the counter.

"It's fine," she nodded, four times. I felt her eyes on the saint around my neck. "I have to go to work. These," she grabbed a bottle of pills, "You have to take one of in an hour. This," another bottle, "you can take right now, then not again for six. And these," she picked up two containers, "are for your sore throat and the stomach bug you have. You said you had a headache and a stuffy head too, so I brought vapor rub." She set everything back down in a cluttered mess. "You need to really drink a lot of water. Don't try the sports drinks until you can keep that down. Your dressing needs changed after you shower or take a bath or whatever, if you're feeling up to it. I cleaned your bathroom, so you're all disinfected from yourself." There was smile number two. I liked her because she tickled herself most of the time.

"You didn't have to," I motioned all around at everything she'd done for me. I couldn't remember anyone doing anything like it, in my whole life. Bella plopped down in my wheelchair and smiled at me. "Alice would have done it. I'm so sorry. I owe you like a dozen, dozen roses, and so much more." I felt awkward. "Maybe twelve factorial."

"How many roses would that be?" she laughed and wheeled around for a second.

"Four hundred and seventy-nine hundred million, one thousand, six hundred," I shrugged.

"But not one less," she taunted. "Now I'm going to be late for work. I'll see you." Just like that she kissed my forehead again, pushing stray hair from obstructing it. "You should have told me. We'll figure it out."

"Are you going to check on me after work?" I don't know what made me say it, but I felt like an idiot as soon as I did. I was afraid she'd be so mad at me for not telling, once she saw that I would survive, she'd never come back.

"Are you going to shower?" she squinted her nose. I laughed. It hurt. "Carlisle said to take Motrin instead of the painkillers." She handed me two. I swallowed them eagerly.

"I promise to shower," I nodded, three times. I wasn't sure how I would manage that, as lethargic as I felt.

"I'll see you later then," she gave me a wave before disappearing.

I sat in my bed, staring at everything, trying to comprehend the tornado that had just touched down in my life. I never had trouble keeping up with things, until Bella. I stayed there until I realized Bella wore my clothes, and I pictured her in my dress shirt, and only that, and I pictured her in my sweats, on my couch. That was a new one. Bella on my couch. Then I slapped myself for thinking such things when she had literally given up almost three days of her life making sure I was feeling better.

Nine hundred and fifty-eight seconds, and I finally moved to take the designated pill, and softly chug the whole bottle of water.

I finally managed to get to the bathroom. It smelled like my grandma's house, like the brown bottle of Lysol. I liked it, for a second. A stray towel hung on the shower door, something I could never do. It smelled like Bella; like Bella and I. I stared at the see through shower door and knew that she had been in there, naked. She was making it impossible to be a good person.

I showered, allowing the water to melt the languidness from my body, to boil the sickness out of my veins. I scrubbed each inch, each nook, each fiber of me until I was exhausted and the heat made me want to throw up again. Six scrubs, on each inch, rinse, and six more. I left Bella's towel in its place and got a new one. I brushed my teeth, noticing a new, spare toothbrush sitting in the glass. It was yellow. It made me smile.

I put my new bandage on, like Carlisle had shown me so many times, and pulled on a fresh pair of sweats. I touched the ones Bella had worn, and I was sure I couldn't ever wear them again. I would constantly be thinking of our naughty parts hypothetically touching. Night had already set in, I realized, as I rubbed the smelly stuff on my chest, allowing me to breathe again. I wanted to always be this subdued. My mind was on vacation.

In the formal living room, everything looked normal and untouched. On the kitchen counter, three cans of soup were waiting. The idea of food made me want to go back to the bathroom, so I ignored them. A container of Chinese food that wasn't mine sat in the fridge. It made me sad that Bella really didn't touch anything of mine. I hated myself, for not telling her.

How would I have told her? By the way, I'm going to have surgery, you know, because I'm such a winner already, I want you to worry about me and take pity on me, since we've been on three dates, and kissed thirteen times total, cheek and lip put together.

In the den where the giant flat screen, video games, walls of movies, and big comfy couch rested, sat a spare blanket folded on one end, and a pillow from my bed I didn't realize I was missing. It smelled like Bella, and it worried me how much I was enjoying sniffing my stuff.

The library was the only place I noticed any real evidence of Bella. A few of her schoolbooks sat on the giant desk in the center of the room. Papers were stacked neatly. I scanned the pages, enjoying her report on the Spanish Inquisition. A few books were taken from the shelves, and I was a bit confused that she would rather use my books than food. Twelve books. The window behind the desk, the one with the view of the park, had little, soft writing on it that wasn't my own. Bella took notes on the window. These weren't notes though, not about the Spanish Inquisition, but medicine I'd taken and instructions Carlisle had apparently told her. Another round of guilt hit me.

I took Bella's paper with me to the den, grabbed my laptop, pills, water bottle, and remote, and got set up. I hadn't written a paper in four years, but it was easy to just type what Bella had already written. I wasn't surprised she didn't even use my laptop. I did one hell of a job making her feel welcomed. About halfway through, I took another pill. Scooby was so close to being captured in the basement…

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty," soft hands seemed to whisper as they trailed along my cheek and neck. I peaked open an eye after a lazy smiled stretched across my face, because it felt good. "How are those drugs treating you?"

"So good," I smiled as Bella mirrored my face. "How was work?" I sat up, balancing my legs on the giant ottoman that sat in the middle and acted as coffee table and footrest. Bella slumped beside me, putting her bare feet up beside my own. I checked my watch, but my wrist was uncharacteristically naked.

"Tiring," she mumbled. "Is this my paper?"

"What? Oh," I rubbed my sore neck nervously. "I was typing it for you. It was the only thing I could think of doing for you right now. I tried to order over four hundred million roses, but I got laughed at."

"Thanks," she muttered and threw it on the ottoman past our feet. "Are you hungry? I could make soup." There wasn't even a laugh at my joke, which admittedly wasn't that funny, but still.

"No," I shook my head, three times. "I don't think I could handle it."

"Are you feeling better?" she ran her hand over my forehead again. I hoped I had a fever.

"A lot better actually," I promised. "Just don't want to chance it yet. What time is it?"

"Almost three," Bella pushed hair from her face and let out a breath. She looked so tired, and I felt round nine of guilt start pummeling me. I wondered how much sleep she managed to get between school, work, and me.

"I should have told you I was having surgery," I offered, because it seemed like that was what she needed to hear at that moment. "I figured I'd be healed enough to ask you out in a few days, and you'd never have to know."

"Did you think I wouldn't notice you're in a wheelchair?" she scrunched her eyebrows together. "I'm quite aware of it, and realize it comes with other things."

"That's just it," I waved my hands excitedly. "You make me forget that. I didn't want you to know what else went with this. I'm sorry."

"You don't owe me any explanations," she sighed. I felt like I did. Thirty-eight seconds of nerves rattling in the room and silence.

"Here's your out," I mumbled, staring at my dead legs, cursing them in my head.

"Out?" I felt her eyes on me. They were the color of Ray LaMontagne's voice; warm and trembling, powerful and pleading. They warbled on my face for thirteen seconds before my voice was found.

"You know, you're escape without hurting my feelings so you don't feel guilty," I moved the laptop cord absently because my fingers were going crazy with anxiety.

"You think just because this is hard, I'll run?" Bella sounded angry. I didn't like it at all. "I like you. I'm nothing like Tanya."

Those words made me anxious for another reason. I felt her little hand in mine again. I wanted to ask her how she knew, but I also wanted to talk about anything else, besides Tanya.

"I'm not good at this," I whispered.

"Who is?" she played with the necklace that I wore, because of her. She pulled it and played with it, twelve times.

"There's a towel in the bathroom, soup in the kitchen, and video games in here, if you wanted to have a sleep over," I whispered, quieter than I'd ever whispered anything before in the history of all whispers. "You can have my sweatpants and sweatshirt." I whispered it so quietly, because I wanted it to come true more than anything else in the history of all wishes.

"I have to work tomorrow night," she sat up straight, and dropped the necklace. It was like my touch was toxic.

"Oh, right," I nodded, once, because I didn't have the heart to do it anymore. I tried not to sound too dejected. I could get her sick, after all.

"It's not that I don't want to," she explained quickly, sitting up on her knees eagerly. "Because I really do."

"No, I understand," I tried to sound convincing, but I felt as if I'd run over a kitten.

"I've never been on a sleep over with a boy before," Bella whispered so quiet, it put mine to shame, which was alarming.

"Really?" I was startled by this news, and my voice grew to normal volume, which seemed extra loud since we'd been talking in whispers. And then I digested it. "Oh."

"Yeah," she nodded, eight times. "The one thing that had to stick, in all my years of church…"

"Oh!" I exclaimed again, slapping my forehead with my hand when I realized what she was saying. "Oh…" I realized Bella in my bed would only be a fantasy forever.

"Yeah," she nodded again, this time only three. "I'm the only kid in the world saving it till marriage."

"Why can't you sleep over?" I cocked my head at her. She stared back. A stray piece of hair curled at the base of her neck, near her ear. I wanted to play with it, but figured she might think I was trying to seduce her. I couldn't seduce her if I tried.

"Didn't you think…?" she stuttered. "I mean, I thought since…sleep over…it usually means…" It was fun to see someone else so nervous, and had I not been on the receiving end of taunting for all of my life, I might have enjoyed doing it to her. "Can't you…you know?" she twirled her finger, referencing my naughty part. "I mean, I don't really know, except I thought it meant, and if it doesn't, then I'm not sure what I'm saying. And I don't want to know about," she motioned back to my naughty part, "that. But I do, but you don't have to tell me. It's inappropriate." The rambling was cute.

"I'm fully functioning," I stifled a laugh after a few seconds of sifting through her dialog for any semblance of a statement. She slapped my shoulder and tried to not smile through her blush. So she was thinking about my part. That made me excited. "But I just wanted to play video games with you, and because it's very late, I don't want you to go home in the dark. I'm flattered that you think I could have tried anything though."

"It doesn't scare you, I mean, here's your out," she threw my phrase back at me, and I realized how absurd it was. "I mean…I just told you I was a…you know…_virgin_." The way she hissed the word was like it was super top secret, classified even. She was redder than the blood in her body. "It's off-putting sometimes. I just… I don't know what I'm doing…in this. In life. In everything…and I'm tired. And this isn't going well."

"Well it's sort of like you being in a wheelchair, and I'm the normal one," I smiled at the comparison. "It doesn't scare me."

"Right," she let out a breath and gave me a sky-shattering smile. "I'll go shower then." She kissed my cheek and bounded out of the room. I couldn't help but groan when I saw her ass in the shorts. That was counter-productive to keeping my part calm.

I let my head lull against the back of the sofa, listening to barely hear the throb of water when she started the shower. Bella, naked in my shower.

We were getting into a huge mess; a mess that was going to put gum in the laundry machine of our lives.

I started typing again, because it made my mind not as busy. Eighteen thousand, seventy-four characters and keystrokes. Give or take forty-two thousand including spaces and backspacing. I missed the gentle dulling of the drugs.

I finished typing Bella's paper as she came walking into the den, my sweats rolled on her hips, one of my undershirts tied in the back in a knot with sleeves rolled on her shoulders, as she toweled her hair. I found it ironic that I prayed to God she was just kidding about her abstinence.

"All done," I closed the laptop and gave her a smile. Now that I knew I would never get to touch her naughty parts, it was stuck in my frontal lope, pressing on my optic nerve, projecting images of her and I constantly.

"Are you hungry?" she sat beside me, and I smelled myself, and her, together. Six more showers and she'd smell like me completely.

"Not really," I sighed. I wasn't, but I had moved on to the sports drinks. I'd be starving tomorrow. "You can eat, if you are."

"I already ate at work," she explained, hanging her towel on the doorknob. "Did you take your pills? Need more chest stuff?" I wished she would stop mothering me, and want to touch my naughty bits, even if she wouldn't. I wanted her to want my proudly functioning part.

"All doped up, you date rape drug specialist," I gave her an evil grin. She just shook her head and picked up the little case of vapor rub and gave me questioning eyebrows. I nodded, almost too eagerly.

"Move him," she nodded towards the necklace. I slung him to my back. Slowly, Bella rubbed the poignant stuff on my chest. "I love the smell of this stuff," she smiled gently. I liked the way her hand looked on my chest. "Better?" her hand rested where my diaphragm was, and I could only think of it lower. I folded my hands in my lap and nodded. She capped it and curled up a little beside me. "Can we watch a movie instead of playing games? I suck at video games anyway."

"Sure," I nodded. I didn't care, because she was staying the night with me. And if I told people that Bella spent the night with me, they'd think we totally had sex, at least once, but probably five times. I didn't have anyone to tell, but it was still a nice option. I pulled myself to my chair and went to the movies before deciding on some generic romantic black and white movie.

"I like your house," Bella offered as I turned of the light when the TV came to life. "It's so comfortable."

"You can make yourself at home, anytime," I offered, eagerly. She just nodded, three times. I hoped that meant more sleepovers. I hope that meant our naughty bits would meet.

I moved back to my seat. I could feel her warmth from the shower still radiating on her skin. The movie started and I pulled the blanket over to cover my legs and Bella's little body, which seemed to only know how to nestle against my side perfectly. Her head rested on my shoulder and her hand in my hand. I wasn't sure if I was her boyfriend, but I felt like this is what boyfriends looked like, when they held a girl.

"If I wasn't sick, would we be making out right now?" I couldn't help myself from asking as the heroine slapped the man she would eventually love. Bella giggled, and I felt it against my arm.

"Probably," she shrugged as if it didn't matter either way.

"We would," I gave her a smug smile.

Bella put her hand to her lips, kissed it, and pressed it gently to mine.

"That's all your getting tonight, 'Outbreak' monkey," she tickled herself, second time today. I liked it when she was so goofy only she enjoyed it. Almost as much as I liked her giggle.

"Thank you," I whispered when she put her head back on my shoulder.

Throughout the movie, I felt Bella's fingers play with my own, trial along my forearm, glide along my ribs occasionally, rest on my hem of my sweats, and each movement felt good. It felt too good, like meeting Stephen Hawking good. My arm eventually went around her legs, and I traced her calf with feather-light grazes. It might have seemed romantic, but mostly it was because I couldn't sit still.

When the credits started to roll, I moved to turn off the TV, but Bella held my arm as she slept. Slowly, I extricated it and laid her down on the pillow waiting there. I wasn't sure what I should do, but I wanted to lay with her. I wanted it more than I had ever wanted anything in the history of wanting. But did she want it? Was it a consentual cuddle? She had to want it, right? Isn't that what all pervs say to themselves to make it okay?

Bella rolled towards me and held me tighter.

So, I let the opening scene roll repeatedly, and I heaved my legs up on the couch before pulling myself alongside Bella. As if suspecting I'd do it, Bella's sleeping body moved, then nuzzled back into my own. I stayed flat on my back, as close to the back of the couch as I could because I didn't want her to fall off and hurt herself. Half of her was on top of me though, somehow, and that saved room. Like dirty tetris. Her leg went over my own, her arm went around my chest, her head on my shoulder.

I felt her breaths on my skin as I took each one with her.

Bella took care of me. She was sleeping with me. I felt indestructible, but I had to do better.


	6. The Neither Here and the Nor There

**I don't own, obvi.**

**Also, this isn't chapter 6...just an outtake sort of chapter six. **

_Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you:_  
_Do not arouse or awaken love_  
_until it so desires._

It might have been the exhaustion, the stupid flu still lingering in my body, or the fact that Bella wrapped her little arms around my chest and hugged me tightly throughout the night, as if she were dreaming of me leaving and didn't want me to, but I had never slept better in the thirteen million, one hundred and forty-one thousand, nine hundred and eight-eight minutes of life, than on my couch, buried under Bella's hair and soft murmuring lips.

They weren't just any lips though. These were lips that felt like oatmeal, fresh from the microwave before adding milk, and you can't wait for the dinosaur eggs to develop, so you burn your mouth in every spot, but your chest gets this glowing warm feeling that slithers to your finger tips and knees. But they tasted better than oatmeal, even with brown sugar.

I liked that her arms were little. Not awkwardly little, but still proportionate to her body, just tinier than mine; ineffectual to lift more than a hundred pounds but holding me like a breathing teddy bear. I liked that these arms were around me and I met her two weeks ago and it felt natural, like the condensation of a millennia of evolution. My brain didn't work like it normally did here, and I just thought about her little arms and my big arms and how much this made me feel not bad. That's a nice think to focus on, sometimes.

I counted each breath she took, twelve hundred and eight, the space between each peak and trough, three point nine seconds, and then her face buried deeper into my chest and I held my own breath because I didn't want her to wake up, ever. Except I did. I wanted her to wake up, and I wanted to ask her what color hair her mom had, why she had dimples on one side when she laughed, what kind of places she wanted to go, what type of toothpaste she used, why she was so sad when she talked about her dad, how many times she burnt herself baking, what her grandpa was like, and if he would like me as a man. While she told me things, I wanted to watch her hands, or put my fingers where there were spaces in her hand, and I wanted to watch her lips and I wanted to kiss her, a lot, and frequently, and in every different way imaginable.

Her hips adjusted against mine, and I gulped, because swallowing wasn't sufficient. They moved again, and once more before she stilled. I wish I had been privy to that dream, or that it would never end. But it probably was just her, trying to not fall off of the couch. If I told myself that, it was less painful than getting my hopes up.

"In the morning, I won't be able to tell you how much I like you," I whispered to her hair, which smelled like mine, if mine were tinted in strawberry and vanilla. "But I can now." I kissed the top of her head. "Thank you." Sleeping Bella didn't make me stutter, or have doubts. Sleeping Bella also could keep a secret and not leave.

My mother once told me that I'd never find someone who could like me if I didn't find things to like about myself. I figured she was wrong, because I still hated myself, and despite that, Bella was sleeping with me. But she wasn't sleeping with me in that way, but this way was enough. Almost. I mean, I would want her bits to meet my bits, but this was so much, I couldn't imagine more. It'd be like getting an elephant for Christmas, and the lions arriving the next day. It's like getting free ice cream. I was alright with paying for the ice cream, if that didn't make her sound like a hooker. Sometime metaphors don't work exactly right.

Since Bella had been around, I felt less anxious. I worked, I hung out with her, and I waited to do the previous again. I figured Bella hadn't seen the worst of me, so she was still fooled.

"I wish I could ask you how to pray," I sighed and ran my hand along her arm, under the blanket that covered us both, walking my fingers along the soft skin. "Because even though I don't believe in any of that, you do, I think. I wouldn't ask to walk, just for this…to be good. Because you are pretty and smart and drink sweet tea and are kind, and I'm not. That's what I'd pray for…"

I felt her warm body near mine, and the blanket we shared, and I felt needed, wanted, sustained. It was new, creepy, comforting, and alarming. But sleep carried me away from the safety of having Bella in my arms, subdued, peaceful, oddly charming, even when dead to the world, sexy, still.

I had dreams of Bella, naked against my window, and beating Michael Jordan at a game of H-O-R-S-E. The second part seemed more apt to happen, for a few reasons. First and foremost, I couldn't hold Bella against my windows. Second, Bella would never marry me, and I wasn't sure if I was the marrying type. Those people were…like Emmett. And third, I doubted Jordan's skill from a wheel chair.

When I woke, Bella's body pressed against my own was just a dream as well, and she was nowhere to be seen. I listened to the quiet of my apartment, and knew she wasn't there. It was like a horrid example of a one-night stand. Cuddle and run. Again, the light in the room wasn't morning, so I figured she went to work, or even to change for it. I didn't know where she worked, but figured I'd have to find out, since it was alarming to me, to sleep beside someone, and map their curves and valleys and not know where they worked. I might have been old-fashioned though.

I lay on the couch and ran my hands over my cheeks, through my hair, digging the heels of my palms into my eyes, to see a little clearer. I looked forward to waking up with Bella, snuggled against my side, protected from the world, like my arm was the wing of an eagle. That seemed dramatic and awkward, but oddly enough, not the lamest thing I was thinking.

I wasn't sure if I'd done something wrong, if she was coming back, if I should call her, or if anything mattered. I was sure that I'd figured out an idea for one of the mixtures we'd been working on in the lab though. At some point, I'd figured it out, while worrying about if the tiny girl who liked to swap plates of food with me, even if she wasn't fond of what I got, just to see what it was like, was ever coming back, or if she liked me like I liked her.

My waking mind was absolutely useless, distracted with pieces of Bella, confusion as to what the hell to do, and formulas. It was not conducive at all to functioning. I might as well have been on painkillers still.

I pulled myself up, and realized I felt better with a significantly lower urge to vomit. I also realized I was sore as hell and needed to change my bandage. I then realized I wanted to increase the time spent with Bella by seventy-four percent, or six hours and twenty-eight minutes each time we hung out, though I felt it wasn't related to my bodily epiphanies.

I debated if I should call her or not while pushing myself out of the den and towards the bathroom. Had the smell of something delicious not caught my nose, I might have gone the whole way to the bathroom, worrying about protocol and lack thereof, and the problem of gravitational force upon the functioning of nerve growth, without stopping. If there were nothing holding me, would my muscles be more open and ready to function? Seventeen times faster than the concept of the speed of light, divided by the interpretation of the need for inertia could be less than needed for sound to appear visible, theoretically. Carlisle would know what to do after a cuddle night. There had to be a flower for that sort of thing.

I watched the most curious thing that had ever happened in my kitchen, when the cartoon stream of smell made me freeze, and pulled me against my will towards the oven.

"Oh, take me on back, take me on back, and take me back to the place where I can feel your heart," Bella sang softly as she tucked the hair that didn't fit in her messy bun behind her ear and swung her hips, still clad in my sweatpants, still allowing a tiny bit of skin to show between shirt and pants. I watched her wash some dishes and rinse them, complete with spin and dance moves. I knew I must have been smiling, because it was so funny to witness. I watched her pull something from the oven, with an extra hip twist for flare. I liked the way her bare feet padded around the hardwood floor.

I liked that she was still here, and for once, I was wrong. I wouldn't have to figure things out. Well, I would. I still had no idea what to do, and now there was a new set of problems.

I wish I could have stood behind her, held her hips while they wiggled against my own, and danced with her, or kissed her neck as I surprised her. I'm sure if I stood, her head would fit right under my chin, and my arms would wrap right around her tummy, and she would be consumed.

"You never really live until your backs against the wall," Bella shimmed to the music that played from the iPod dock on the kitchen counter. It was funny, to see her face so concentrated and lovely. "Godspeed." She licked her finger and smiled to herself. She finished putting dishes away so that I might not have noticed she even baked.

"Smells good," I interjected as the song ended. Bella spun around with the same face on that I remembered the first time I met her. Bella in my bed. Her face didn't stay shocked for very long, because she gave me a very sexy grin and sauntered over to my station at the entrance to the kitchen with a handful of whatever was in the oven. Muffins. Seven of them. I liked that she wasn't inhibited, and again, the fact that she had just been dancing and shimmying around my kitchen was forgotten because it was in the past, and we were the present. She was a firecracker, and my brain was spilt across the floor.

"How much did you see?" she stood in front of me and offered a muffin with a wry grin. One hand on her hip, I wanted to pull her closer, but I didn't want muffins on the floor. Seven muffins.

"Not much," I lied and gave her a little smile as I took a muffin. It was blueberry. She blushed and sat the tray on the counter. "Did you find these ingredients in my kitchen?" I seriously doubted the ability of my pantry to produce the ingredients necessary for muffins. I also seriously doubted my ability to make general conversation with her and not make an ass of myself because she was her and I was me.

Bella grabbed one and came to sit on my lap. I liked it, that it was her first thought, to be close to me. I also liked being a chair if it meant her ass in any proximity to my body. Which also meant the rest of her would be near as well, which was also very wanted.

"No, I borrowed some from Alice," she answered disinterestedly, instead focusing on the perfect place to start eating a muffin. I had the same problem. Infinite places to start, thus the conundrum of a circle. Pi, radius, the muffins had a surface area of three point eight four inches. "I printed my paper and I cleaned up the dishes too. You don't have any groceries."

"You didn't have to," I started. "I like to do dishes." It was a lie, but I figured that wasn't something she'd check up on at any point, and I'd do dishes, if it meant more muffins. "I'll order some groceries."

"Or you could go to the grocery store," she offered with a tiny smile. "Next week I have to go, we could…"

We sat in our own little world, like a little sun, in the galaxy of my kitchen, in the universe of my condo. It was a mobile world, but neither of us acknowledged that. I realized Bella's ass was on my thigh, and I enjoyed that thought as much as the muffin. She swatted crumbs from my naked chest and laughed when I mumbled with a full mouth about how delicious they were. And then, when I was fed and oddly enough, still sore, yet willing to ignore it, Bella kissed me, mid-giggle. It was like pressing her teeth against my lips because she was smiling so much. It was almost absent, and tasted like blueberries. I didn't know where to categorize it, but I liked it. It reminded me of my parents in the morning before we were sent off to school, over steaming cups of coffee; a simple reminder.

This was the best morning of my life.

"You weren't there when I woke up," I whispered when she moved to get up, and I pulled her back against me. I've never felt more needy. Three of my fingers tapped against my thigh, and I might have felt one.

"You needed your sleep," she whispered and stilled my hand. She stilled it with her hand, filling the spaces between my fingers with her own. I pretended to tap. Twenty-four times. I was suddenly glad I wasn't a penguin, and my hand had fingers, which meant that she could put her fingers in mine like a zipper. Penguins couldn't hold hands.

"I needed to wake up with you because that's how a sleep over should end," I offered. She stared at our hands. Twenty-eight joints, together. I wondered if she was tapping as well, in her head, or just planning an escape route.

"Oh," she moved her lips like the letter. "I shouldn't have let myself sleep over."

"Me neither," I said quickly. "You could have gotten sick." I was, above all else, health conscious.

"That's not what I meant, Edward," she sighed. I liked the way my name sounded as a sigh coming from her mouth. Bella in my bed.

"I know," I nodded, four times. "Well, I don't really now. Didn't you sleep well?"

"I slept great," she blushed. "But, it was so soon. I don't want to mess this up." I wanted to laugh in her face, a huge loud bark of disbelief at the notion of her ruining this. I wanted to scream and laugh at the same time for her to look at me, for her to imagine my head, and then think that she could ruin this at all. But that seemed inappropriate so I swallowed it and it came out like a burp smuggled in my lips. Arguably the lesser of two evils.

"I promise, that despite my devilishly good looks and plethora of dating techniques and experience, I will not try to pressure you in any way," I held my hand in her hand against my heart like I was pledging allegiance. She smiled and I started my count for the day.

"I have to go to work later," she let it drop. I wasn't sure what it meant. I had seventy-three questions swimming around in my head, but I couldn't push.

"I think I have seven thousand pages of theories to read and catch up on," I pushed my head backwards so it hung in air. Bella traced along my neck with her finger, forcing me to gulp until she traced my Adam's apple. "Clinical trials started last week and the preliminary results are in, so I'm sure I have a million emails." I wanted to start reciting the Periodic table because her hands felt like cough syrup when your sick and it coats your throat, and I didn't want her to stop.

"You aren't overestimating are you?" she chuckled slightly. I shook my head. "I'm going to go paint before work. I'm a little behind on some works. I have a show in two months."

"Do I get to see these pieces?" I shot my head back up quickly, too eagerly. I might have head butted her had she not been leaning away from me. That would have sealed the deal on my status as a Casanova.

"No," she shook her head and stood adamantly. "Never ever. What if you didn't like them? Way to much pressure on a relationship in the beginning."

"So we're in a relationship?" I latched onto the wrong part of the statement. Bella blushed. That was two already. I liked it so much I wanted to lick her clavicles from acromion to acromion. That would be counter-productive. I also wanted to shrink to nothing because that was a question I meant to stay in my head and beat myself senseless with later wondering about what she meant and debating the inflection of each syllable.

"We're in something," she stated. I liked that enough that I didn't feel the need to push it, and only seventy-three questions remained in my mind.

"It would be inappropriate to ask you to come back after work, wouldn't it?" I realized. Bella smiled, two, and nodded, twice. I sighed and let my head droop forward because it was horrible news.

"Unless you ordered pizza, then it would inappropriate not to invite me over to repay me for taking care of the Outbreak monkey," she stared at me. Her eyes were darker, like the park after it rains, before dawn, when it's foggy, and feels like the Mesozoic era.

"That's a very unflattering nickname," I tickled her side until she squealed and begged me to stop. But I liked the feel of a shirt riding up on her, so I kept going a little longer. "Pepperoni?"

"And olives," she managed to gasp between tickles.

"Ew, no olives," I tickled a little harder, making her laughter louder, echoing against our universe. "Say it, no olives." I liked the echo, especially since it made the universe real, even though space was a vacuum and sound didn't travel there. It did here.

"Never!" she taunted with a tongue poking between her lips. I wanted to bite it, but it slipped back in her mouth. I could have been Columbus, in the unexplored territory of her teeth, but that might have been inappropriate.

"You'll say it!" I vowed and tickled her gently before moving my face near hers. I held my lips above her lips, until they were touching, but infinitesimally. I felt her stop breathing, even though she should have been breathless from the tickle attack. I trailed my thumb against her jaw, and it felt really good. I was hovered over her as she lay in my lap, legs slung over the side awkwardly. It was my dip. I felt her hands pull my neck, urging me forward. I slid a hand against her thigh, towards her hip. It might have grazed her ass. "Pepperoni?" I whispered so my lips moved against hers, brushing them with four syllables.

"And olives," she smiled and kissed me. I realized my plan failed and I would eat or pick off disgusting little olives from my pizza. "I'm not spending the night, either. I have class tomorrow."

"You're so far ahead of yourself," I pulled her up from the position I wanted her to stay.  
"I wasn't even thinking of asking you to stay." Lie number two.

"Not even a little?" she played coy. I liked the way her boobs looked in my shirt. That seemed like the most appropriate time to have that thought, yet also I understood it was a thought that shouldn't be said. But there it was, camped out on the edge of my tongue, waiting for the worst moment.

"A little," I shrugged. With that she stood. I realized I lost two fights somewhat, and Bella didn't fight fair.

"You should invite Alice over, too," Bella informed me as I followed her to my bedroom and then bathroom. "She seems upset about Jasper or something."

"Why would I invite my sister?" I was very confused. "I want to make out with you." Blush number three. These were my new favorite things to count. I was glad I hadn't mentioned her boobs, and instead only embarrassed myself by being honest.

"You have to woo me," Bella informed me. "Let me change." She closed my door and I did twirls in my bedroom. Sixteen times before she came out. "She's really confused about life and she needs someone."

"Fine," I agreed because I didn't care. "Sometimes, you make me feel singular."

"Good or bad?" she pulled her hair up again after placing the clothes she borrowed, folded, on the end of my bed. I hoped that meant she would be using them again. The hem of her shirt showed her belly button when her arms were up. I wanted to meet that part of her as well, and not wave from afar like a man stranded in the water trying to flag down a ship, but that was dramatic.

"Very good," I gave her a smile. "Would you like to see a movie with me on Saturday?"

"I have to work, but I can try to switch for the morning. My last week of classes are next week, so I have finals to study for too." Bella smiled. Three. I made her smile a lot.

"No movie Saturday," I nodded and we moved towards the elevator. "You could come over and study. I'll work on my stuff, and won't distract you. I'll even cook."

"Can you cook?" she slipped her shoes on. I realized this was as close to the door as I had come all week.  
"You'll have to wait and see. It could be another sleep over," I offered. That way we could have something to look forward to, and I wouldn't try and offer to have her over every night.

"Ok," she agreed with a weaker smile. I didn't want to count it. "I'll be over after work."

"I don't want you to ever do something you don't want to do," I pulled her hand so she was within kissing distance.

"The problem is, I want to," she murmured and kissed me again. It was the fourth of the morning. "Go outside today, it's been a while since you were in public." I disliked that she realized that.

"Have a good day at work," I let her get on the elevator. She waved shyly and disappeared with Ernie.

Again I was left with the whirlwind that followed every meeting with Bella. She left my head all dizzy and confused, while making me forget time.

So I sat in my living room, staring at the door, and wondering why the moment she left, my mind started racing, making up for lost time. Thirteen point six-eight minutes later, I realized I was sore and went to change.


	7. The Lost and the Found

**I don't own, obvi.**

**Chapter Six: The Lost and the Found**

_Jesus Christ, that's a pretty face,  
_ _the kind you'd find on someone that could save._  
_If they don't put me away,_  
_it'll be a miracle._

_Do you believe you're missing out?  
_ _That everything good is happening somewhere else,_  
_but with nobody in your bed  
_ _the night's hard to get through._  
_And I will die all-alone,_  
_and when I arrive I won't know anyone._

_Well, Jesus Christ, I'm alone again,  
_ _So what did you do those three days you were dead?_  
_Because this problem's gonna last_  
_more than the weekend._

_Well, Jesus Christ I'm not scared to die  
_ _I'm a little bit scared of what comes after;_  
_Do I get the gold chariot,  
Do I float through the ceiling?_  
_Do I divide and fall apart?_  
_Cause my bright is too slight to hold back all my dark._  
_This ship went down in sight of land,  
__and at the gates does Thomas ask to see my hands?_

_I know you'll come in the night like a thief,_  
_but I've had some time alone to hone my lying technique._  
_I know you think that I'm someone you can trust,_  
_but I'm scared, I'll get scared and I swear I'll try to nail you back up._  
_So do you think that we could work out a psalm?_  
_So I'll know it's you and that it's over so I won't even try._  
_I know you'll come for the people like me,_  
_but we all got wood and nails,_  
_and talk dirt at hating factories._

"I have to go," Bella whispered. It was like a feather. I kissed her neck a little more and pulled her hips towards mine. "I'll be late." There was a spot, where I could lick her jugular and run my nose along her jaw, and that was a spot I wanted to live, forever. I pecked it three times, slowly.

I wish I could have counted how long this had been happening for, but I was too focused on some of the noises she made, and keeping my pants from tearing and embarrassing the hell out of myself. I liked her lips because they were soft, and her tongue was like purgatory, but the kind that I wouldn't complain about or anything, the kind Dante didn't include in his _Divine Comedy_.

"Don't go," I whispered as my hands toyed with the back pocket of her jean shorts. I wasn't man enough to full on grab it because this was new, and she was like a baby penguin. If you saw one walking on the street, and it let you pet it, you wouldn't want to push your luck and try to pick it up or something in fear that it would waddle away. I was petting and that was beyond my wildest dreams already.

There was a little whimper from her lips that crawled towards my ears as she bit the lobe. Enamel on adipose. There were nearly an infinite amount of places my lips could find on her body. There was an equation somewhere, but I gave no fucks.

I felt her chest pushed against my own. It felt good, girly, and very distracting. Tanya had fake boobs, and I didn't like them. I wasn't thinking about hers though, because Bella's were thought consuming in and of themselves. I very much wanted to meet them face-to-face and introduce myself. I spent enough time peeking at them; I should at least be polite. My hands stopped moving as they stuttered, stuck between palming Bella's ass, or moving to her boobs. Tough call. It was like trying to choose between cupcakes or brownies; both are delicious.

"Well stop tasting good," she moaned against my tongue. My hands gripped her ass and pulled her tighter. I bet her knees hurt, straddling me, but she seemed to like it, because she crawled on me. It was like holding a baby penguin, but that was so far from my mind. Her tongue felt good in my mouth.

This was the hardest make out session I'd ever had. Not that I'd had many chances, but damn. I felt like a guy who could talk to Emmett about football.

"You started it," I taunted back when her hands wound in my hair. They liked to go there, though we hadn't made out like this ever before, she liked to play with my hair.

I was making out with Bella in my office chair. She was in my lap. It was like her pelvis was oxygen, and I had a pair of Hydrogen in my pants. It would be wrong to make a joke about wetness. Again, with the purgatory concept, what with my girlfriend being abstinent and all. Though I wasn't sure that's what she was. My girlfriend, that is; She was definitely abstinent. I was becoming painfully aware, each night she kissed me goodbye.

"I didn't hear any objections," she smirked and finally pulled her lips from mine. It was like I could think straight again. Her eyes were darker, like sap when it hardens. I wanted to breathe but it was hard when she looked so pretty. For some reason covalent bonds raced through my mind in images on my eyelids. She made it hard to think.

"Who am I to stop a woman on a mission?" I retorted with a smile. She was already up to three smiles and two sexy grins. My hands were still on her ass. Her boobs were still pressed against my chest. Her hands were still in my hair and playing with the hair that met skin there. And through all of this, I hoped she didn't feel the molecule developing below.

"A mission?" she cocked her head. I liked when she did that, too. Seventy-three degrees of quirky confusion.

"To take advantage of me." My chest puffed a little of its own accord. She rolled her eyes with a little blush. I wanted to kiss her neck again until I left marks and people were forced to ask her about it.

"Is it…" she leaned forward, her Oxygen rubbing dangerously against my Hydrogen, "working?" her finger traced my neck to the edge of my t-shirt where they played with the hair that peeped above the hem there. Her fingers bumped the gulp I took as I shifted my hips. Goddammit. Her thumbs rested on St. Thomas. For a split second I thought about praying, but remembered I didn't know how.

"Yes," I whined and let my head hit the back of the chair as I clutched my eyes shut and shook it, nine times. It just wasn't fair. Expected, with my luck, but not fair at all. I let my hands drop in defeat. It was like starving and having a brownie shoved in your face but your jaw is wired shut. A delicious brownie that felt like a beautiful ass. I felt like a guy who could sit in a bar and scratch and didn't know anything about molecular biology.

Bella leaned back, so she as sitting more with her bum on my knees. Her hands sat against my chest, and I liked the weight there. It was warm, through my t-shirt and felt like lead. She fingered the necklace there. I liked when she touched it. Her hands, laced with various colors of dried on paint made me think she had rainbow hands, and I liked that. Refraction hands. I liked that her hands were always covered with charcoal or oils of various colors that almost blurred to dim hues or chalk or clay dust because sometimes I would find a stray color in my monochromatic life, and that was good, I think. And I had all these thoughts about colors and her and there were no numbers, which I realized, which made them come back.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. When I looked at her, I only saw the top of her head because she was hunched slightly and staring at our water molecule. "I just had an unbelievably shitty day, and selfishly needed you. It was a lot, really soon."

It wasn't soon though. And it wasn't enough, not even by a long shot. The sleepover was a week and a half ago.

There'd been two more dates, and two more hang outs; no more sleepovers. Bella had finals last week, so she was busy finishing her summer semester in time for the statistically hottest part of the summer. Eighty-one point nine degrees in July with three point nine nine inches of rain. I was busy with clinical trials and recovering after the devil flu that ran its train on me. I think a lot of it was her being mad at herself for having a sleepover.

After each date, I dropped Bella at her house, and she kissed me, each time with growing intensity, and then nothing. I was forgetting that I was opposed to this whole mess. I learned that Bella had a gallery exhibit coming up, and I wanted to go. I had a charity fundraiser, and I wanted her to go, but we both never asked. Bella's mom was a hippie, a rolling stone, a free bird, and every other Bob Dylan-esque cliché one could use to dress up an excuse of why a mother would abandon a child. She talked about her like she admired and was bitter towards her at the same time. When it came to her father, Bella was somewhat mum. Probably due to my aversion to all things associated with religion and the hypocrisy I was living thenceforth. But that didn't matter. She talked about him with tenderness, in such a way that made me want to talk about my father. Almost. I wanted to tell her about my mother, but I didn't want to brag.

When we hung out at my apartment, I would spend most of the time watching her. She would chew on the end of her pen and scrunch her eyebrows to a point that I wanted to make it easier for her, whatever she was reading. She liked to lay on the floor and the curves of her body only created more problems for my wondering mind while I tried to focus on something as simple as the chemical reaction of L2 molecules upon cancer cells and the results from varying experiments on lab rats. And when it got late, Bella would sometimes cuddle against my side and we'd watch a movie. Sometimes she'd kiss me and I'd touch her. Then she'd kiss me like she was going to war and leave me for the night, like every time she kissed me might be the last. It might have been, each time, because each time she left I beat myself into submission that this was very very bad.

"What happened?" I tilted her chin so she could look at me, because if she had a choice, she'd kiss me again, and I'd forget every other thought. She kissed really good, and she used her body in a way that made my body hurt, all over, deliciously.

"I just talked to my dad," she muttered and sighed. I understood that the conversation was over for some reason. Bella was usually sad when she talked about him, because she missed him. I sort of understood that. "I don't want to think about it." I understood that even more. I didn't know if or how or when I should tell Bella about my whole predicament, or anything, because then she would hate me, and I'd be proven right, in the one part of life I wanted to be wrong. She had that thing too, I think.

"You can straddle me at my desk without a greeting anytime," I promised, trying to make her laugh, which she always did at my statements like that, where I meant every word and there was no hint of joking present. "It was a nice surprise."

"Right, I saw you here, all sciency and authoritative and I couldn't control myself," she explained. "Don't look so delicious when you're doing your work." I laughed because she thought I was delicious, and that's how I referred to her ass, and I wondered if she knew that. She kissed me before I could ask her anything though.

It reminded me of the sleepover, when Bella wrapped her little arms around my chest and hugged me tightly throughout the night, as if she were dreaming of me leaving and didn't want me to, and I had never slept better than on my couch, buried under Bella's hair and soft murmuring lips.

"You don't have to leave now, do you?" I kissed her gently. All thoughts of work were gone. In fact, all thoughts were gone, something I was becoming increasingly aware of when she would leave and I'd hit the wall of an overactive mind with an IQ of 182.

"A few more minutes," she rested against me. I liked that she liked our escaping moments as much as I did. I counted each breath she took, five hundred and ninety-eight, and then her face buried deeper into my chest and I held my own breath because I didn't want her to move, ever.

"I bet their plane is on time," Bella whispered. "I should go." I disliked being reminded that Emmett and Rosalie were back. For some reason, everything was just perfect when I was alone with Bella. She was finally done with school, so we could hang out more, and I liked that too.

"I should call Carlisle, he wanted to talk to me," I assented. Bella nodded, but didn't ask anything. She stood in front of me, her butt against the desk. Bella on my desk. I wondered if she wanted to ask what Carlisle wanted, but stopped herself because she was waiting for me to yell at her and push her away. Then I thought of her on my desk and wondered if it was true that guys thought about sex every seven seconds.

"I'll see you tonight," she shoved one hand in her pocket and one pushed some hair from her face. It was at least sixty percent strawberries today. "Oh, and I found this in my gym this morning," she pulled something from her pocket, a flier that was folded into nothing.

"You go to the gym?" I heard the wrong part of the conversation, ignoring the paper she was unwinding. She laughed.

"Of course," she snorted. "Do you think I just look like this?" I liked that she motioned to her body, mostly because I liked her body. "I like to run, and it was too rainy to run in the park, so I went to the gym. I don't really work out, just jog. It clears my mind."

"Clears it of what?" I took the paper when she handed it to me. I wondered if it was equations, like my mind, and if I could jog, and things would go away. Things went away when I kissed Bella, so maybe she was my jogging. There was physics in that moment. I figured out it would be impossible for Carter's theory to be true, and I'd have to write him back as soon as Bella left.

"Mostly just stupid stuff," she waved her hand absently and looked away from me. It was probably me that she ran from or towards or against. I wondered when it would be acceptable to not accept her answers, or when she wouldn't accept my allusions. Twenty-three seconds later I looked back at the paper.

"Do I strike you as the tournament sort of guy?" I tried not to laugh at the advertisement for a two-on-two wheelchair basketball tournament sponsored by the city for the Fourth of July celebration in the park.

"Sure, why not?" she returned. I accepted her almost Augustinian logic. "I just thought of you when I saw it and I figured it was worth showing you." By now Bella had moved towards the other side of my desk.

"You thought of me, why?" I prodded. Because I was in a wheelchair. That was the only answer.

"Because you said you and Emmett play like twice a week, and I haven't seen you play since he's been gone," she explained. She saw the time on the clock after thirteen seconds. "Now I really have to go, but I'll be back soon. I think Alice wanted to watch movies." I groaned. I could go without hanging out with my little sister. Bella frowned and looked at me with eyes that were bleeding, and it sucked. "You know, eventually, we'll have to talk about a lot of stuff," she forewarned.

"I figured," I gave her a twenty five percent smile.

"Think about the tournament," she walked towards the door. "I was thinking about selling some paintings or something at the block party. Everything goes to youth clubs and stuff."

"Can I buy your paintings?" I asked innocently. "Or maybe your services?"

"Now I sound like a hooker," Bella laughed when her hand touched the door, as if it tickled her. "I could paint you."

"Maybe," I agreed. That was like putting a ring on my finger. Bella left with a tiny smile, her brownie swinging deliciously through the hall.

Soon enough, Rosalie and Emmett would be back, and I wondered if this ended; if I was just a project until her friends came home, or a distraction, or worse yet, a bet, or even worse, they paid her to babysit me. Then she would sort of be a hooker, what with the kissing and all. But I didn't pay her, so she wasn't my hooker. But I would pay her, and I couldn't decide if that was wrong or not, so I stopped thinking about it.

I stopped thinking of Bella and started proving Carter's theory wrong. Quasi-empiricism and the problem with unifications along the parallel as the basis for the foundation of mathematics, and Carter was an idiot.

The phone rang six times, and my desk had four books, eighteen pieces of paper, nine pencils, two erasers, seven dry erase markers, and a half eaten sandwich sitting on it. I didn't realize it was weird that I didn't have many chairs in my house until I wanted Bella to be sitting with me, with her own papers and books and maybe a fully eaten sandwich. She made good ones. But not in the misogynistic way, she just made good everything.

"Hello?" I finished writing my final thought and was ready to call the carrier to take my revisions to Carter at Northwestern. We'd been friends for a long time, but maybe 'friends' is too harsh of a word. Enemies. I'd say frenemies, but I'm ashamed that I even know that word to begin with.

"I knew you were home," Carlisle's voice sounded stern, and I remembered what it was like to get in trouble.

"How?" I decided I should find something to make for Bella for dinner.

"You're always home. I called seven times already," he scolded me. I rolled my eyes. I hadn't heard any. "Read the email I sent you. I have another idea."

"Great, sign me up for another waste of hundreds of thousands of dollars so I can be someone's case study," I mumbled. It was hard, balancing the phone and pushing my wheel chair. It was already late and the only thing I wondered was where Bella was. Twenty-two point seven five percent of my day had passed since she left. It was slightly alarming so much time passed in a short paragraph.

While I talked to Carlisle I decided that I was going to go give up on my own clinical trials. I'd rather prove people wrong all day. I wondered if I had to discuss this with anyone.

"Just read it, Edward," Carlisle decided for me, and I'd go. Or I could ask Bella. She could read it, and tell me to do it or not. But that might be something that wasn't meant to be discussed. "If you don't I'll tell Bella."

"Should I?" I asked, quite seriously.

"Yes, I really think this is the only project that is making any headway," he gave me the normal pep talk. "There aren't any other studies out there, and you refuse to put that ridiculously large brain to dealing with your own issues."

"No, I mean, tell Bella?" I set my letter on the table beside the door and wondered how Bella kept getting into my apartment. Then I realized she had corrupted Ernie. I decided I'd tell him that she was welcome anytime, just so he knew she wasn't a hooker.

"Have you told her anything?" I imagined he had a smile, and his feet kicked up on his desk that was littered with journals and the article about this miracle treatment for nerves or paralysis or whatever else was wrong with me, of course, with shirt rolled to the elbows and a cup of coffee Esme brought him; maybe tea.

"Um, that I'm in a wheelchair and think in complex variables and have an IQ that puts Einstein to shame," I recounted the list of my attributes. I also could make rainbows. There was definitely a smile on Carlisle's face, though I didn't find anything funny.

"You should talk to her if you want her to know the truth," he explained. It sounded like a bunch of bullshit.

"You're not helpful," I insisted and decided Carlisle was my person, just like Rosalie was Bella's, and the only difference was Rosalie was actually helpful.

"You're not easy to help," he chided. "Esme wanted me to invite you over for the Fourth. Do you think you might invite Bella?" I heard a woman's voice in the background and knew she was listening. She was bringing tea probably.

"I'm competing in a wheelchair basketball tournament," I decided. "But I'll ask her if she'd like to come over for dinner."

"You're competing? In a tournament? With other people?" I disliked how each of his questions sounded more and more farfetched. "In wheelchairs?"

"Bella showed me a flier, and the money goes to a good cause. I figured Emmett and I could log some charity hours for the business, outreach to the community and whatnot like Dad used to preach," I explained as I decided to make grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. That wasn't the truth though. I didn't care about the company. I really didn't even care about some of the chemicals and medicines I helped develop, or the laws and theories I'd created when we expanded to physics research.

"Tell Bella," Carlisle stated. I didn't see how anything led him to that statement, but he said it anyway. I didn't know what I was supposed to tell her.

"Goodbye, Carlisle," I responded, because it seemed like the right thing to say. I hung up, not carrying if he responded the same. I realized that might have been rude after I did it.

I buzzed for a courier and gave him the stack of papers. I needed some direction in my life.

I went back to the kitchen, and I disliked how many hours disappeared without me noticing. When I was with Bella, I was painfully aware of each second of the day because she made my brain stop. At this moment, there were equations dancing and numbers configuring and there were pounds and pounds upon tons and tons of weight that seemed to fit in my cranium. It had been this way forever, the gentle, sometimes blaring, hum of things and thoughts and thinks and ideas and concepts and analysis, and long, long lists of never-ending thoughts. I felt my brain vibrate and sometimes bend under this weight until sometimes I didn't realize what time it was or what day it was, and then five years had passed.

So I made a grilled cheese while all of these things swirled around, though unnoticed because this was my constant state of existence.

"Oh little brother," Emmett's voice called from behind me. He needed a bell, because he was like a fucking cat. "The conquering husband has returned after pilfering his newest bride."

"That's nasty," I didn't really find the grilled cheese appetizing anymore so I set it aside. I was only excited Emmett was back because that meant Bella was with him.

"If you don't stop telling people that I'm going to kill you," Rosalie stated, quite firmly. I remembered what it was like to get in trouble again. I turned to find them sitting on the back of the couch, his arm around her shoulders. I did that with Bella when we sat right way on the couch. There was twelve feet between us.

"How was the honeymoon?" I pretended to be interested. Bella said asking questions was a good was to interact with people and make them think you were normal. She said it made you personable.

"Edward, it was the best time of my life," Emmett gave me a smile like a cartoon wolf does where it stretches to his forehead and shows eighty-seven teeth. "I think I want to go on permanent honeymoon."

"You could," I shrugged. It was polite to agree with people's dreams. I tapped my thigh ninety-eight times so far. "Aren't you moving into the house in the suburbs?" It was the family house, in a neighborhood near Carlisle and Esme's, filled with people with four kids, two dogs, and white picket fences, and yard crews that came every Tuesday and Friday.

"We talked about it," Emmett grinned slyly with a tiny shrug. Rosalie giggled into Emmett's chest and I felt like the honeymoon wasn't over, or they were idiots. "And we decided to just live in my apartment still. With Alice here, we think it would be good to keep the family close." I disliked the overuse of the word 'we'. I also disliked that suddenly there was a family. Mostly I disliked that it was Rosalie doing it since she wasn't there before it all, and Mom probably wouldn't have liked her.

"Ok," I nodded, twice. "Where's Bella?" I hoped that wasn't eager sounding and I'd asked enough questions about their honeymoon. Rosalie looked at me as if the honeymoon had ended, right at that moment, so I figured it wasn't enough questions, and was, in fact, too eager.

"She went out for a little," Rosalie answered. "I think she has a lot to think about." The look she gave me was pointed. I wondered why, but not enough to ask. I disliked that her sentence ended in a preposition.

"Do you know where?" I remembered Bella walking into my office and kissing me without a hello and how sad her eyes looked between the determination and something I was mildly afraid of knowing. My hands tapped like a snare on Adderall, sixty-seven times.

"Why so curious?" Rosalie continued her stare. There was no malice just…weirdness.

"She said she was coming over for dinner," I checked the clock after twenty-nine more taps and realized it was past normal eating hours, or what I assumed to be such.

"Why would Bella be coming over for dinner?" she continued. I wondered if Emmett knew he married a bitch. Then I wondered if she was a bitch. Then I wondered why Bella would be best friends with one.

"Because I invited her when she was straddling me in my office seven hours and eighteen minutes ago," I looked straight back at her. I didn't want to tell her about the water molecule, but she made me. It was our water, not Rosalie's.

"Right," she nodded, six times with a smirk. I couldn't tell if it was disbelief, which meant Bella never said anything, which I doubted with Rosalie's attack dog like stare, or the best friend protecting her best friend from the wicked man in the wheel chair with no heart. I was like the tin man, but worse.

"Cut him some slack," Emmett nudged her. "Clearly time didn't stand still while we were gone and love has burst forth like a flame on dry wilderness, canvassing the coldest heart in a summer unto itself."

"Has he been all metaphoric the whole time?" I turned to Rosalie after staring at Emmett like he had a brain tumor.

"Yeah," she shook her head with disgust as he just smiled and gazed at us both. Definitely a tumor. But his hand was on her ass so I figured he was just in love, and I disliked that.

"So, where did she go?" I wanted to put my hands in my pocket and whistle as I nudged back and forth from foot to foot, but I couldn't whistle, and I couldn't stand, so I just put my hands in my pocket. Twelve seconds.

"Where she always goes when she has to think and is lost, at least sometimes," Rosalie smirked again. I didn't count hers because she wasn't Bella and it scared me.

"Which is?" I waited for her to complete the thought, solve the puzzle. Forty-two taps. Buy a vowel.

"If I told you, it wouldn't help her figure anything out," Rosalie shrugged, but I knew she wasn't upset she didn't tell me.

"I'll see you guys later," I rolled passed them because they weren't going to help. I heard Emmett mumble something about taking Rosalie down to his apartment. I wouldn't object.

"Good Evening, Mr. Cullen," Ernie greeted me at the elevator. "How are you feeling." I forgot I hadn't seen him in over a week since being sick, then having no need to leave since Bella always came over. I figured it was because her house had two stories, and she didn't want to open that can of worms.

"Better," I nodded, four times. He gave me a warm smile. "The young lady, Bella Swan, you can let her in anytime."

"I figured as much once she threatened to kill me with my own tie if I didn't take her up," he chuckled. I wondered if that is what really happened. "She's quite persuasive. The next morning she gave me muffins on her way back up." I was able to count all eighty-eight floors.

"Do you know where she is now?" It was a long shot. The doors opened and I tapped six times and stopped.

"She went up with Mr. Emmett and Mrs. Rosalie, and I brought her right back. She started going west when she left. Looked a little…" he trailed off, frowning at not having the right word.

"Upset?" I offered.

"Lost," he decided. "I asked if she was alright, or if I should have her car brought around. She said she would walk, and she was alright," he smiled at the memory. "Sometimes."

"Lost." I repeated the fact and I left. I turned right when I walked out of the building. I didn't know where she was, but figured she at least had to head back towards the condo for her car. I didn't know what car she drove, and that consumed a lot of my thoughts.

Lost.

After six blocks I realized that I was rolling down the street like an idiot and I had no right to look for Bella. Or maybe I wanted to have a right to look for her. And that consumed my thoughts more than what car she drove. I decided it must be a little four door or something. Bella was practical. I hoped was something like a Porsche. I could give her one. If I didn't have a right to look for her, I probably didn't have the right to buy her a car. Or maybe giving her a car would get me the right to look for her.

Lost?

But I was looking for her because there was this weird feeling in my gut that told me I should.

I couldn't ever remember having a gnawing feeling in my gut before like this. It was like someone had my intestines in a vice and had it at the setting that didn't squish, just put pressure there. Heavy pressure.

I wondered if the time to talk was close.

I stopped pushing myself because I realized I hadn't seen anything outside of cracks in the sidewalk, and might have missed her or where she was. To my left was a bar. To my right was a church. I wanted a drink, but instead opted to try something.

I pushed myself into the old, out of date church. It smelled like what I imagined Christ's birth to smell like; Mir and frankincense and dirt. There were little candles in little alcoves with scary looking statues, draped in blood and tears and somber expressions, like zombies. Red velvet and dark wood only made it feel like medieval Germany. I knew it was catholic.

The pews were empty, and as much as I hoped Bella would be sitting there, waiting, like I had just stumbled into her little world, as if she'd be sitting at every church in Chicago, I had to guess that maybe she wouldn't go here, and maybe she was at the bar, or a coffee shop, or even her house.

Gold and ivory and all the richness and warmth I could feel seemed to be sitting at the front. With another zombie. The most famous zombie of all.

I felt wrong, but this was where Bella went when she was lost, and suddenly I was lost, so it was worth a try. And I was lost because suddenly, it wasn't alright to be Edward Cullen.

I needed to do something, so I stood. I hadn't worked out with Carlisle in a few days, and I knew he'd be upset if I didn't sometimes try. I placed my hands on the pew and held myself up, like Mighty Mouse. I gently let weight sit on my legs. It felt awkward and dead, but I tried to move. They didn't, but I could stand.

So I stood in the church and I figured it was like my own form of kneeling. I was doing a lot of things that weren't normal to me, that weren't logical, that just felt.

I stared at the wall where a comic book version of bleakness before me spread across the walls. Bella had faith sometimes. I had faith never, and this only reinforced it.

I wish I knew how to pray, because that seemed like the only way to get the gnawing away. When Bella was sleeping with me, on our first and only sleepover, I wished I could have asked her how to pray. When she was sleeping, that's all I thought about. I hated that I ended my sentence in a preposition. And that night I sighed and ran my hand along her arm, under the blanket that covered us both, walking my fingers along the soft skin because even though I don't believe in any of this whole religion thing, she did, I think. If I could pray, I wouldn't ask to walk, just for this, me and her…to be good. Because she was pretty and smart and drank tea and was kind, and I'm not. That's what I'd pray for. I hated that I ended another sentence with a preposition. But maybe prayers had to end that way, and maybe that's what I had just done.

"These candles work quick," a familiar voice made me smile and wish I could turn to find her. My hands and legs were hurting. There was a dull, awkward hurt that ran through my unused muscles when I tried to shift. Maybe I was twenty-six percent healed.

"Of all the churches in Chicago, she had to walk into mine," I shook my head. Bella walked over to me, quietly, with twenty steps that echoed.

"Of all the times in my life, he had to roll into mine," Bella quipped.

"I'm not rolling right now," I felt her beside me. If I could walk, I would put my arms around her, and she would have fit under my chin with her cheek on my chest.

"No," she whispered. My legs were ready to give out; half from her voice, half from feeling mildly excited in my naughty parts in a church, and half from them holding my weight up. Another preposition and an improper fraction.

"I came looking for you," I finally turned to see her, cheeks tinted pink and blotchy, eyes glassy, but not tear marks there. I didn't know social cues, but I knew she was upset. I felt mildly wrong that I hoped this meant more straddling. This was outweighed by my need for her to smile.

"I don't know what I came looking for," she sighed and sat on the pew behind where I was holding myself up. Another. Twelve seconds.

"Is it time to talk?" I sat in my chair.

"Probably," Bella looked to the front of the church and her eyes were dreamy.

"You make me feel and not think," I confessed because I was mentally and physically drained and purged.

"Good or bad?" Bella turned and smiled. Two.

"Not sure yet," I answered honestly.

Bella nodded, four times.


	8. The Song and the Solomon

**I don't own, obvi.**

**I had this on my computer and never finished...so here's a little nothingness, but everythingness... ( )...**

_O daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you—  
if you find my lover,  
what will you tell him?  
Tell him I am faint with love.  
_

"This place freaks me out," Bella whispered. I watched her hand float on her chest, waiting to pull on the saint around my neck. Her body seemed out of place in this place, and I liked that. She tucked one leg under her bottom then let the other sit up so she could rest her chin on her knee. It seemed blasphemous.

I wondered how a place like this could freak her out since I figured she spent more under gothic arches and stained glass than the average girl her age since her dad was a preacher and all. Plus, she had eyes that looked like communion and lips like wine.

"Same," I nodded in agreement. I really didn't mind it though. Bella, even when she claimed to be freaked out, seemed normal here. I played with the necklace, twelve times. "What happened to you today? I'm worried, and I'm not sure I'm allowed to be," I finally relented after Bella set her cheek on her knee and stared at me. Twenty seconds. I wanted to count something, but I just kept pulling on the chain and tapping my thigh and hoping she would kill me or kiss me, which were one in the same sometimes.

I wanted to ask her the seventy-three questions, and maybe a few more. I wanted to know why I chased her, but I figured she couldn't tell me. I wanted to ask her when she would get sick of me, but for once, I didn't want the answer.

"Did you ever google St. Thomas?" she smiled, three. I shook my head, twice, and let the metal drop. "I'm surprised you kept it, much less wore it."

"One of the many unexplainable events that have occurred since you snuck into my room," I mumbled. Bella laughed, and that seemed blasphemous, too. But a lot of things that felt good were blasphemous.

"You can walk?" Bella asked. I knew that she was figuring things out on her own. I let her, because that's the best way to figure things out sometimes.

"I can stand," I nodded, four times. I liked that she was still wearing my shirt from earlier, and it was still rolled up on her shoulders, and it probably smelled like her and me now. She waited for me to explain, and unlike her, I couldn't question my way out of answering with another question. Her eyes made me break. They made me break and stutter. I disliked that she was able to evade, and I wasn't. Though, the idea of seeing me standing in a church was probably as close to a sick dream in reality as she'd ever come. "You look pretty right now. Always. You always look pretty, but even more now. But always, too." I knew that wasn't the right answer.

But, Bella did look pretty, and she made me say inappropriate things. I went back to counting the number of eyes in the church. Fifty-six, so far. I hoped she knew that my mind was always doing ridiculous things like that, but I hoped she didn't know that at all. I wanted her to know my excuse, but I wanted her to believe I wasn't damaged beyond repair.

"You can stand?" she blushed, twice. I thought about what Rosalie said.

"It's a long story," I sighed. "What happened today?" I went back to my original question, the reason for my quest into the bowels of this craziness that had been thrust into my life by the pretty girl with eyes like birthday candles, when everyone is singing to you and it's quiet and awkward, and you have to decide what you want for the next year. You think you have your wish planned, but you look at everyone with their faces covered in that faint glow, and you think you're happy, so you waste it, but it's not a waste when you wish for happiness.

"It's a long story," she returned. It's always a long story if it's worth hearing and hard to speak.

We were quiet then. It seemed like the only reaction that was appropriate. I should have been thinking about what to tell her, but instead I was wondering if I could kiss her, or if I should, or if I would be allowed to do that. I wondered if it was blasphemous to think about kissing Bella in a church. Or if I thought about kissing her outside, but still in the church. That made me wonder if thinking about it in the church, even if it was another location was blasphemous. Ultimately, it all made me want to kiss her again, until her knees went weak and then she'd forget about walking altogether, until she wasn't lost, or better yet, until we were both so lost nothing else mattered.

"St. Thomas was born into this really rich family," Bella started suddenly. She sat up straighter. "His brothers were in the military, and he chose to study. He studied everything, and had all these principles and was a devout follower of reason. He joined this order that wasn't the order his family liked. His family captured him and kept him locked up for two years. His brothers even hired prostitutes to break him of his vow of chastity. But he scared her away with a torch. He said God sent two angels to him to keep him strong in his vow. He escaped his family and spent his life studying and being a scholar of the Bible, as well as math and science. He died when a branch hit him while riding a donkey. He's the patron of the clergy."

"So your dad gave it to you," I reasoned. She nodded, twice. "After your mom gave it to him."

"But how did it get to be around your neck?" she smiled a sneaky smile. Her eyes were brown and screamed like Christmas time.

"A crazy preacher's daughter gave it to me," I smiled back at her, and hoped she thought my eyes were screaming something; anything.

"He's the patron of learners, academics, scholars, also," Bella's smile faded.

"Scholars who believe," I corrected her.

"I believe enough for you," she nodded, once. "And you were standing." Like that, it was decided.

"Because of academics who don't believe," I informed her.

"Over ancient forms departing, newer rites of Grace prevail; Faith for all defects supplying, where feeble senses fail," Bella recited as she set her cheek back on her knee. Her eyes looked like cocaine and thumping bass.

"I want to kiss you, but I don't know how," I whispered. I wanted to ask her if that was a prayer.

"You say something inadvertently charming and perfectly awkward in such a way that makes my heart melt," Balla sighed and looked at me like Bea Arthur at cheesecake; loving, wanting, hungry.

I wondered how she found me charming when everything I ever said I wanted to swallow as soon as I said it.

Before I could ask her, she moved closer and her hand was on my neck. I wanted to put glue there, so her hands would get stuck and then she'd be forced to stay with her arms around me forever, but that seemed inappropriate and oddly awkward, to a huge extent that even I couldn't do it.

And then she kissed me, and I forgot to think about who was the man in the relationship.

I wondered if that was a prayer.

For a second, I had faith.


	9. The Push and the Pull

**I don't own, obvi.  
I forgot how relevant this was at the time,  
and oddly now, and (always). **

**Chapter Seven: The Push and the Pull**

_I'm a mountain that has been moved_  
_I'm a river that is all dried up  
_ _I'm an ocean nothing floats on_  
_I'm a sky that nothing wants to fly in._

_I'm a sun that doesn't burn hot_  
_I'm a moon that never shows it's face  
_ _I'm a mouth that doesn't smile_  
_I'm a word that no one ever wants to say  
_ _I'm a fugitive that has no legs to run_  
_I'm a preacher with no pulpit_  
_spewing a sermon that goes on and on and on._

_Well if we take all these things  
_ _and we bury them fast_  
_and we'll pray that they turn into seeds_  
_into roots and then grass,_  
_Or the sky opened up and started pouring rain  
_ _like He knew it was time_  
_to start things over again.  
_ _It'd be alright, it's alright  
_ _it'd be easier that way._

"All hail the victors," Emmett bellowed as we ventured into Carlisle and Esme's backyard. "Sort of." It was an important addendum. Meaningless two words that together truly defined everything. Like, _I love you; however,_ or _you're paralyzed, kind of_.

A group of people stared at us and I didn't like it because it felt heavy, and I was center stage. I recognized a few from the hospital, which I wish I hadn't. They looked foreign and wrong, like the square root of one. Bella held my hand, her fingers were between mine and her palm was hugging my own. Seventeen muscles.

"It went well?" Esme hurried over to us, despite the conversation she was formerly engaged in, and beamed like we returned from battle. The whole week she'd been learning about basketball and taking the girls out to get us gear or to help Bella with painting supplies, like a mom. Suddenly it was like we were the Little Rascals, and she was waiting with cookies and milk even though we were old enough to do it ourselves.

It made me remember that Bella didn't have a mom either. I didn't know if it was appropriate to appreciate this fact, so I ignored it.

"Edward shot the winning basket," Emmett clapped his giant, heavy, awkward and bad-at-basketball-in-wheelchairs hand on my shoulder. "For second place." _Sort of_.

"That's so wonderful!" Esme was hugging me before I could look to Bella for reassurance or escape. I didn't like all those eyes on me, seventy-eight. I didn't like that I'd been in front of people's eyes all day. Thirty-eight seconds. Mostly, I didn't like that Esme was hugging me and she reminded me of my mom. She let her hand cup my cheek before she patted it gently and smiled. I was glad I shaved. My mom hated when I didn't shave, and I bet Esme thought the same thing. Before I could tell her that I missed my mom, she hugged Emmett. So I went back to forgetting.

Bella squeezed my hand, but probably because I was squeezing hers. I felt bad, because her hands were little, though powerful, but mostly so little and easily squished.

"We've got lots of food, so help yourselves," Esme continued with the mothering. I hated that I liked it. She looked at me with sad, happy eyes and followed my shoulder, to my hand, to Bella's hand, to Bella's shoulder, and back to my face. Isosceles triangle. Then her eyes were happy, happy.

I was holding Bella's hand. Sometimes, those thoughts still made me obscenely happy. Like when I realized I was kissing Bella, and I'd get really happy I wanted to smile and shout, but then that would mean stopping the kissing, and that wasn't good. Even though Bella was kissing me, she was still very much not doing anything else, so kissing had to be enough of a way for me to tell her how much I liked her. Though I didn't need anything else from her. Even if she just held my hand it'd be enough, and that contentment with so little worried me.

I spent seventy-eight percent of my time thinking of ways to show her I liked her. The rest was spent trying not to embarrass myself.

This was a moment like kissing Bella. Right now, as Emmett and Rosalie walked with Esme towards the group of people, Bella stood behind me and wrapped her arms around my neck before putting her face beside mine. There was a little peck under my ear and it tickled. I wanted to shrug my shoulders in a natural response, but I fought ever urge to move, because I didn't want her to think I didn't want her kisses. I wanted all of them.

"You did really good today," she whispered and her voice stroked my ear. I know I blushed and pulled her arms tighter so I was wearing a Bella scarf in the dead of an arctic winter. "I've very proud of you, and I know people were jealous they didn't get to kiss a silver medalist." A scarf that smelled like vanilla and me today. It smelled like me because Bella spent the night again last night. Three times since the night in the church. "Today was good." There was a giant breath and she hugged me tighter for a second. I wondered if people were watching us, and if they thought the grin on my face was permanent, because it felt like it. I blushed at the thought.

Three times since two weeks ago, when Bella sat in the church and told me about how much she hated that her mother left, how much she was afraid of being like her, how hard of a time her father had with it, and even worse, how much of a failure she felt like. At the end, she told me she was most afraid of me. And that was horrible. I counted the seconds we spent while she talked and paused, and then I stopped, because I wanted to make her feel better, and I would take as many seconds as it needed to make her happier.

I didn't say anything, but let her talk, let her tell me everything she wanted because she did that for me. She waited hours, days sometimes until I would spout an answer to a hard question in the middle of watching a movie. She would nod and we'd talk about it until she'd realize I didn't or couldn't answer anymore, and she'd wait again. So I tried to do that for her.

I knew only that in the moment, Bella was solemn, and though unfortunate, her eyes were the color of dirt that gets upturned before planting, and it was hopeful, and it was good. There was sadness in her fingers picking at the old wood of the pews as she informally sat there, crushed in the velvet and silent _Ave Maria's _that seemed to echo because the rafters still sang, Bella reminded me of something. Her shin was tucked under her while the other knee was in the air and she stared at it, like reading everything to me, her life from her thigh, and I didn't tell her I wanted to read it too, like Braille, with my fingers, or tongue, because that seemed inappropriate. But the look in her eyes, that bounced from a warmth that screamed to a sadness that roared, all made me want to hold her, which was foreign. I felt an itch to write it out on my windows and solve it for her, but that seemed inappropriate as well.

So I told her that I was petrified of her. It was the truth. When I was with her I thought too much about what I should say, but most of the time I ended up not thinking at all, and I liked it and I hated it. I told her that I didn't know what I was feeling. That being with her was the scariest thing I'd ever done. There was seven minutes and twelve seconds of stuttering and stammering to an extent that I'm sure she didn't hear a word of what I actually meant.

And I told her all the things I'd done.

I told her about the accident, where I forgot Tanya's present at home, and my parents turned around and got plowed by a drunk driver. I told her about watching my mother bleed after glass shredded her chest and stomach. I told her about my father's head that smashed against the steering wheel when the air bag didn't go off, and I told her that I didn't remember anything else until I woke up and three months had passed and my parents had long since been in the ground. I told her I could stand, but couldn't walk, because my nerves weren't healed, but they could, and since I met her, they healed a lot, and I wasn't sure if that was her or Jesus, but I had more faith in her than most integrals. I didn't tell her that part, but I told her that I was afraid, and that was religion. It seemed too strong, to say I believed in her that much, and I was afraid she wouldn't see that, or worse, she would.

I didn't tell her that I felt better to sit alone, to sleep, to just pretend to be a ghost. That seemed inappropriate, and she was sad.

Bella kissed me and sat in my lap when I told her, and she cried at my story. No one ever cried with me, for me, on me, so I let her put her arms around my trunk, and I put my arms around her, with my chin on her head, and she put her tears on my chest.

We looked like a Beatles' song, all harmony and melody.

She told me that it wasn't my fault, and I told her that it was. I asked her why she was crying and she told me because she would never get to meet my parents and because I hurt. I wondered if she meant my legs, but I never asked.

Her hair was more vanilla, and felt good against my cheek. I twirled it in my fingers against her back and she sighed in a way that made me picture sun filtering through a window. I didn't picture her naked in my bed, but I pictured her in my bed, molding to me, like a gel pillow. And that's something.

So we sat in our little cocoon, and I asked her if I was supposed to look for her. She told me I was when she kissed my neck and held my ear and my hair when she cried against my shoulder. Bella's little hand seemed strong, like defying all genetics and physics, when it rooted in my shirt. It hurt, but not physically. I asked her if she was my girlfriend, and she kissed me on the lips and nodded and smiled. I told her I was her boyfriend. She nodded and kissed me again. I wanted to kiss her all night, but it seemed inappropriate, so I held her and we took turns breathing.

Then it turned to Bella in my bed. But not the dirty kind.

I wanted to ask her to dance.

"You did really good today," I repeated and chuckled. I wondered if I could make a Bella scarf and keep her there forever. Bella sold three paintings, and I didn't get to buy or see any of them. But I saw her at the games, wearing a shirt that matched my own, black with green lettering and numbers. She had my last name stamped across the back and a number that matched mine, and on the front it had or team name, 'Hot Wheels,' on it. I liked it because it was like she was mine, if anyone wanted to know. I wanted to get all of her clothes printed with my last name. I would ask Esme if this was appropriate. She was a girl, and she knew more girl things than Carlisle, sometimes.

"I did, didn't I?" Bella laughed. "Let's go eat, handsome." I wondered if the moments where I wore her like a Bella scarf or moments where I realized I was kissing her and was very happy, if she had those moments too. I also liked that she thought I was handsome. I wanted to tell her she was beautiful, but I felt like that was all I would say if given a choice, and that wasn't appropriate.

"I'm not really hungry," I mumbled and shrugged, once. I wasn't. I already wanted to leave. It was too much. I wondered if she had those moments too.

"Do you like Esme?" Bella paused in front of me so I had to stop. I wish I could have figured out a tone from her voice. It was empty. Curious. My girlfriend.

People were behind her, all doing what people do at cook outs, but I didn't know what that was, so I didn't want to be there.

"Yes," I nodded, four times, eagerly. Mostly because I did, and Esme hugged me and didn't ask me any hard questions. She also knew girl things, and designed our shirts, and I liked the way Bella's looked. Mostly I liked that it had my name on it, and she said she liked that too, like she was mine, and that meant something, sometimes.

"Then you have to make a big plate of food, eat more than you should, and tell her at the end of the night the potato salad was the best you've ever had," she nodded as she rattled off the list. Bella always thought of things like that, things that I never thought were related. I never knew that potato salad meant I appreciated Esme. Polysaccharides of devotion.

"Why?" I cocked my head, a habit I was picking up from Bella. Over a month she'd been in my life. She had long legs right now, and I wanted them on my body. I liked that her hair was in a messy ponytail and her sleeves were rolled up, and I'd never seen anyone more beautiful. But that was such a weak word. Thirteen seconds.

"Because you like her, and it's a nice thing to do for someone who does a lot for you," Bella explained. She explained a lot of things like that. She wasn't mean, just honest, logical, appealing to my reason.

I figured that was an innuendo and wondered if I appealed to her reason. I also wanted to lick her reason, but that seemed inappropriate. Yet, for a moment I gave negative fucks.

She told me lots of things I should do because it would be nice. She told me to let Alice watch movies with us, and let her talk about nothing. She told me to teach Emmett how to play basketball instead of mocking him or getting angry. She made me go outside and sit in the grass. Sometimes these things were hard to do, but I tried because when I did, Bella would smile and usually hold me tighter.

"Right," I nodded, four times. With that I followed her into the group of people.

Some played horseshoes, some ate and joked, some were loud, all were noisy to various degrees, there was music, lots of food, Esme kept giving me more and more food until I was sure I had the state of Idaho's potato supply in me, Bella joked and laughed, sometimes until she bent over, sometimes until she would look at me and see if I was laughing too, but mostly I just watched her. Sometimes she put her hand on my shoulder, forearm, or her bum on the edge of my chair while her arm went around my shoulders. It didn't feel so bad being in a wheel chair at times like that. Sometimes she would walk away and talk to Rosalie or random people. I would sit quietly and let people pull me into conversations. I thought about Coleman's variable and its implications on the formula that now littered my bedroom window. I probably couldn't explain it to anyone here.

No one asked about research, so I asked them about their lives. It was tedious and did me no good. One man averaged thirty two syllables a sentence and made me want a nap. The equation of sin[(32(beats)-3.14)/polysaccharides] seemed promising.

James and Bella were laughing, and I laughed when she told me about it. I also let my fingers rest in her pocket and stared at James. I hoped it was intimidating. It probably looked like a five year old begging for change for a gumball. But Bella ran her hand along the side of my head and scratched my scalp one moment when she seemed to forget that we were talking about baseball and I was the only guy there, until my eyes rolled back and I groaned. Then she kissed the tip of my ear. It was like eating lava.

A few minutes after we finally were alone, talking about going home and playing video games, a hobby Bella was quickly starting to enjoy, Alice pulled her away. I wondered what my mother would have said about Bella.

"Did you think about the surgery I sent to you?" Carlisle finally caught me when the fires and little string lights came on and the night started. I sat beside the willow in the backyard while everyone started with the heavier liquor. I needed to blend into the background, to escape to my room and find an obscenely weird brunette on my bed and let her smile and make me feel, to just be quiet, to be hidden; I was a lamp.

"No," I shook my head, twice, and watched Bella dance with someone's little boy. She had a big smile on her face, and pretty was an understatement. I think summer became my favorite season because of Bella's short shorts and very long long legs. Long legs that were still very white, but becoming kissed with sun, and sometimes always had paint smears on her thighs. Sometimes I would get to trace it, but most of the time I was afraid.

I didn't wear shorts much. My legs were like those of twigs, if they had legs.

"Edward, I need an answer soon," he insisted as he stood beside me, uncharacteristically sipping a beer from a bottle. Two sips. "I think it would be a good thing to try." I figured he was like Esme, and this was his potato salad. I wish I could have asked Bella.

"I'll let you know by next week," I nodded, three more times. He smiled and nodded, twice. "I think I'll probably give it a try." Bella caught us watching her, or at least my eye, and she gave me a smile, thirteen, and a wink, one. I smiled slightly, just for her. It alarmed me that so much was done for her, and I remembered that I shouldn't, couldn't like her.

"She's a good person," Carlisle mused, taking another sip as he shifted on his feet. "A very good person. And very pretty."

"She is," I nodded, eight times, slowly. I agreed because it was like a law, no theory here. "It's too much," I sighed. The lights flickered against her skin and made me like her more.

"It's always too much," Carlisle agreed. He was looking at Esme, and this was one of those moments where I needed a beer and to grunt in response while we both thought dirty thoughts about our respective women.

"I'm not sure I know how to like her," I concluded, deriving it from the exponents and variables of my life. Carlisle murmured in agreement before three more sips. "I'm not good at it."

"You're waiting for the hurt," he surmised, "For the moment she leaves and you are proven to be a beast and a horrible person who doesn't deserve to be happy." I disliked that he was right.

Bella grabbed a drink and took a big swig while laughing with Rosalie and Emmett. I almost waited for a strapping, log cabin building, salmon fishing, orphaned kitten cuddling, adventure entrepreneur with wavy black hair and a snug Lands End polo and vest and brand name jeans to come up and wrap his arms around her and rock them both as they laughed at Emmett's jokes, because they would be extra funny to the Brawny paper towel model man who Bella deserved.

But I was her boyfriend, and I should have done that, but I couldn't.

"Yeah," I nodded, twice. My person was better than Rosalie.

"Then stop, and be happy," he wasn't laughing, but very serious. I wondered if it was an exaggerated social cue so I wouldn't misconstrue his words. "Jesus Christ Edward, you've done nothing wrong in your life, and people live with worse, so just be. Just be."

He took another swig of his drink. I tried to remember a time he'd been that angry. Sixty-seven and five-eighths months ago, I met him, and he wasn't angry at all between then and now.

"Ok," I agreed. I wouldn't follow through with that, but I'd do the next surgery. We stayed there and watched in silence. There was that dull hum of the dirt that happens on hot nights in the summer, and there was a dead breeze that made everything distended. It reminded me of Bella's eyes.

I watched Bella approach, and her eyes never left mine, wide and barely edged by iris in the dark night. Carlisle nodded a goodbye, and for a second I felt like I should spit and scratch and like he was nodding all of the wisdom of the universe to me.

"Hey," she tucked her hands in her back pockets. I wondered where our Polaroid was from our first date. I wondered what it would be like to put my hands where hers were.

"Hi," I smiled. She shifted on her feet and I knew it wasn't good.

"You want to leave?" she looked at me like I had all the answers. I wish I knew the right answer here.

"We could stay and watch fireworks?" I suggested. It was for her. She bit her lip and smiled on one side. Sometimes her hair fell in her eyes, and she would push it away and it made me smile too.

"I need to breathe," Bella stated. I wanted to ask her if she needed CPR, and if so, if that included putting my hands on her ass, but it seemed inappropriate. "Sneak away with me?" I'd follow her anywhere, so I almost wanted to ask her why she thought to ask, but that sentence was redundant. I nodded, three times.

Bella slowly and overtly spy-like slipped backwards through the leafy veil of the willow tree. With a coy smile and her finger on her lips she nudged her head for me to follow. I felt like a sexual cheetah on the savannah of her purity; only she didn't seem so pure and I couldn't run.

She seemed like walking torture and I was like one of those dogs that doesn't have back legs and drags around a make shift _Kinex_ sets. It sometimes amazed me that I could go from feeling so normal, so regular I screamed twenty-four on the ACT and listened to Taylor Swift, to this guy who contemplated the implications of black holes on the dark matter of the universe and listened to Taylor Swift slightly less.

"Sometimes I have no idea what you're talking about," I whispered, because now it was like we left everything else at the door of this beautiful chapel, and it seemed polite. The leaves glittered like a translucent wall, shimmering with fire light and the string lights in the distance. Under the branches that moved upwards in algorithms like the first metaphor I ever learned, the tree is an umbrella, I only saw Bella, leaning against the bark, staring up at the ceiling and smiling in contentment.

I watched her chest move, as she did, in fact breathe, and I watched her hands grip the back and rub it gently, like she was reading Braille, the story of something I'd never be able to see because I didn't believe in it. But, for the moment, here, when it smelled like dirt and moss and wind, I believed in something.

"Tonight, out there, I felt like I couldn't breathe, for some reason," she pushed off of the tree that held the stars outside, "And you would look at me and it made it harder to think about breathing. And when you're looking at me like this," she waved a finger in my direction, "I can't either. Except I can." I nodded four times because I understood. "I like you, Edward."

And she took a big breath after quickly muttering the final statement. One so big, I wondered if her lungs would explode, and if her alveoli were full, but that seemed like an inappropriate question.

"I like you more than I think you're ever going to let me, and it scares me," she whispered with thirteen percent of the air she inhaled. The rest she stored and didn't move to fill up again or release it back into the world. Her eyes tasted like the first sip of scotch. They sounded like the crescendo of harmony before the overwhelming and defeating fall.

"There is only one nerve in the human body," I ran my palms along my thigh. Eighteen seconds, and Bella only breathed shallowly. "People think they're all different, but it's only one big nerve, with a billion upon a billion branches, like a tree. It'd be easier to count the stars than the branches of nerves in our bodies."

I motioned for Bella to come sit with me because I couldn't stand and wrap my arms around her.

Her eyes were a C major chord that rang and hummed.

"So you have a broken branch?" she whispered as she let her legs rest against the opposite arm of my chair so all of infinity sat in my lap, bunched in a linear set of limits. I let one arm rest on her knees and thigh and the other around her waist. She put her on my chest, like when kneeling at a pew. I smiled.

"I have a few broken branches," I nodded, twice. "But when you're here, I feel every single one, hypothetically."

"Good or bad?" Bella gave me a faint smile. Her eyes were the feeling of yesterday; heavy, high and low.

"Good," I whispered. As soon as my tongue hit the roof of my mouth for the 'd' Bella's lips were there to catch it. Her hands moved so easily to my neck, to my hair. I liked the feel of her mouth. I wondered if she'd have kissed me if I had answered the other way, and decided it'd be a different kind of kiss. This one was a promise; the other would be a question.

"I like you more than I want to let myself," I ran my thumb across her cheek. Her eyes were faith. I felt like that was the only truth I could ever attest to being the truest, yet one I could never prove. She smiled. I watched each muscle move and pull, that's how slow it started. Her lips were plump, and in the night, spoke to me to me kissed again and again and again and again and again and again and again.

"I'm still scared," she sighed, leaning into my hand. I wondered what I was supposed to do with that.

"Me too," I nodded, three times.

"What can I do to make you feel safer?" she stared at me earnestly. Her eyes were a song that is whispered with faint violins and an arpeggio. I wanted to pull on St. Thomas, twelve times and pray to swallow, but realized I still didn't know how. Her eyes were grace.

It felt heavy suddenly.

"Never leave?" I felt the mountain my forehead made as my eyes searched hers longingly. It felt very, very heavy and too soon. Slowly, she nodded, four times. "Don't let me scare you away, because even though I'm afraid, I want to just be," I begged. I was in the trench with the glow fish and I didn't have a brass suit on and the ocean was heavy, so heavy that my watch broke, but I kept trying to breathe. She nodded again, her thumb grazing my neck reassuringly, eight times. Eight times again. Twelve times. "I want to just be, and I only ever get to do that with you." I felt my breathing quicken and my heart rate increase. My pulse was heavy. "I'm so scared." I wondered if that was just about her, but didn't know who to ask.

"Shh," she whispered and put her head on my shoulder, her forehead against my neck, opposite of her hand still rubbing a spot into my neck. Her forehead moved to my cheek where she hushed and cooed to me again. I felt her lips on the ridge of my jaw. I hugged her tighter. I couldn't feel my feet. I almost couldn't feel my hands and I was breathing heavily. I was breathing shallowly. I was barely breathing, so Bella did it for me. I felt her hand move to my cheek where her thumb rubbed my temple. Her forehead pressed against my other. Her breath was balmy on my cheek. "Shh," she begged. I took deep breaths and felt her.

"Never leave," I repeated, though only with my lips. Her fingers combed my hair at the nape of my neck and stroked my ear. I felt each movement, calculated and fluid, organic. "I can't not sound needy around you," I tried to joke, but I felt flat.

"Same," Bella agreed eagerly, quietly. "Don't keep me out," she wrapped around me tighter. I felt like we were vines; happy, needy vines.

"I'm not sure how to do anything else," I nodded, four times. I felt an explosion in my chest before realizing Bella's face was somewhat painted in a blue burst of flame overhead.

"That's exactly how I feel," Bella smiled, three. She was painted gold and red next.

I kissed her because I needed it.

I felt her lips against mine and it felt like putting my lips on a cell phone that was vibrating. She tasted me back, and I felt bold and craved. Her lips moved slowly, but surely, and she tasted like sweet tea. Her mouth was warm, and I wondered if all of her was warm and moist. But that seemed like an inappropriate question. It was a never-ending kiss, one that made me forget to breathe, yet didn't require any thought. I was an automatic nervous system.

Booms and crackles slowly got quicker. If I would have looked up, through the branches, I might have seen them light up the sky until the stars ran away, but I have no fucks for such things at the moment.

I felt infinity shift until it was split, positing on my left and negative on my right, and I was the y-axis. My hands didn't hesitate to hold Bella's hips tightly against my own. I didn't feel her knees, but they felt me, and hugged me closely. Her back went straight so she sat higher than me, until my head was leaning back and her hands were rooted in my hair, holding me to her as if I'd ever think of leaving. Her stomach pressed against mine. I felt it all.

There was urgency and explosions and bangs and speed.

Bella pulled my lip in her teeth and moved her hips slightly. It was a potent mixture. I moaned, and I gave no fucks if she knew she was killing me sweetly. Her lips moved to my neck where they moved and trailed horridly. Her hips moved more and I felt her vibrate a moan against my clavicle. It did nothing to make me feel any more flaccid. That seemed inappropriate, but I gave no fucks for metaphors.

"Edward," she whispered throatily. I liked that. I wished every time she said my name it felt like that. I wished 'every time' was one word.

"I'm sorry," I gulped and tried to push her hips from their dangerous proximity to not just my hydrogen, but my dick as well. It was wrong though, because I wanted the warmth of her vertices back.

"No," she pushed back and I finally opened my eyes to feel her nose pressed against the side of my own. "Please?" Her forehead was against my brow ridge and her eyes were shut, her mouth parted, so I let her breathe. Infinity was back against me, and its weight was welcomed. "So good," she hitched. I wanted to nod, four times, but I didn't want to move and scare her, and I couldn't think of penguins at a time like this.

I wanted to wonder how a talk that was so big it made me feel like my lungs were empty and my head was spinning, led to her and I taking turns breathing while the world collapsed in the sky outside. I wish I had counted how long this happened, because I wanted each second noted, recorded, remembered, stored for when there weren't seconds like this anymore.

"Bella," I moaned when I felt rubbing, horribly delicious, foreign rubbing. My hands moved up her side, which was slightly arched with her spine as her hips swirled and made her breathe a little shallower. "I'm going to…" I knew the rest of that sentence was inappropriate, but it was honest, and that was always supposed to be the key to a successful relationship. I wished more than anything my hips would move, because she was torturing me.

I tried to think of non-sexy things, but that was impossible with little moans on my neck.

"No, I'm going to," she stuttered and shook her head. I kissed her again because I wondered what her moans tasted like. Her tits felt amazing, even through the fabric of her shirt and bra. It was like cupcakes. She pushed her chest forward, filling my hands. I kissed her neck because it was there, and it needed it when her head went back and she could have been staring at the fireworks. Her hips moved slowly; hard and slowly. I wondered if this was a sin, but didn't reflect. The contact was enough.

"Bella," I hissed against her skin when my body couldn't take anymore. I saw bright lights, but not from the fireworks. Hopefully it was longer than thirty seconds. My brain didn't even want to think of anything but the writhing and the perfection and the way our bodies worked.

"Fuck," Bella whispered loudly against my shoulder nine seconds later, when her hips stopped and I had gone numb from the pleasure.

I needed twenty more seconds, because there was no way I'd finish first one day when it really counted. Though, for some reason, right now felt so real I wanted to go to confession. This felt real, like a car crash. Real like a sucker punch. Real like fireworks. Real like a lamp. Real like lonesome.

"Did you just…?" I stuttered, swallowing the dust in my throat. I wanted to kiss her again, but for a second that seemed oddly inappropriate.

Bella's back was arched and her hands gripping my shirt tightly her head buried against my shoulder. I watched her lungs press her ribs harshly until they calmed slowly. There was a weak nod, twice against my neck as her hair tickled my jaw.

"Dry humped you? Yes, yes I did," she managed to answer as she tried to catch her breath. "Shamelessly, and I'm sorry."

"Please don't apologize," I didn't want to move again. "Thank you?" I wondered if they made a greeting card for this. Bella laughed and her hands loosened until her back relaxed. She kept laughing. It didn't feel heavy anymore, but I felt sticky.

"You're thanking me?" she kept laughing, trying to keep a grip on something.

"Not for that," I lied. It was mostly for that, but it was for everything else, and I couldn't be sweet and I wasn't sure what to call everything else. "For…everything, alright? Just, thanks."

Bella raised her head and her eyes looked like fireworks. She kissed me, gently and fleetingly.

"I'm not afraid," she whispered as she pulled away gently.

For a second I believed her.


	10. The Grace and the Shame

**I don't own, obvi.  
Except for the sparkling personality and extreme cynicism. That's all me. **

**Chapter Eight: The Grace and the Shame**

_You can see in his eyes,  
as the people walk by,  
_ _he knows they don't understand._

"_I think it's clear to see,  
that even God don't love me,  
_ _or else why would he leave me this way?"_  
_Salvation is here today._

_He looked to the crowd,  
and they were laughing out loud,  
_ _but he couldn't see them, for tears._  
_When his vision came round,  
there was a young girl on the ground,_  
_and he knew she was finding it hard to cope._

_She never was never a fighter,  
til he laid down beside her,_  
_and gently whispered, 'Hope.'_

_They got up to their feet,  
and they sang,_  
_Hallelujah._

"How does Aspen sound?" Alice typed on the keyboard loudly, forcing her to raise her voice when she asked. I wondered how a laptop keyboard could make that much noise. I wondered if there was a threshold at which the buttons would break, and then she'd be unable to type certain letters and have to write convoluted sentences that didn't make sense because she had to use words without 's's or 'p's or 'e's. Three hundred and nine keystrokes later she realized I hadn't replied and looked up towards my windows. I didn't want her to look at the writing, but couldn't cover them, so I stared outside, pretending they were void of equations and graphs, and a hypothetical double axis.

"Really awkward when said slowly," I muttered, twelve seconds later. Of course, most things sounded bad when really enunciated. I smiled slightly. It was clever, and I wanted it to come up again when Bella was around so she could laugh her laugh that looked like a carnival, and make me smile even bigger.

I wished Alice would let me work before my appointment instead of invading my room. That seemed rude.

"What about somewhere sunny, like the Bahamas?" There was more typing. I wanted Alice to leave my bedroom, especially my bed, and mostly my apartment. If she didn't exist, I didn't orphan her. It was a guilt thing.

"What about Chicago?" I offered. "It's July. Christmas is five months away and I honestly don't celebrate. We haven't celebrated in a long time."

"Since before, yeah, I know," she stopped typing but stared at the computer. I pretended she was reading so I didn't have to ask if she was alright. Who was? "We need our own traditions. We need to do something because this is the After, and it's not the same." I nodded, twice. I wasn't going anywhere.

There was typing again. Twenty-six seconds. I hoped for more numbers.

And they came, for a moment, until I started to think about Christmas. I wondered if I'd be with Bella in five months, or if it'd be over and I would go back to not thinking about Christmas. I thought about Christmas lights and snow on the roads and drunk drivers and I begged for my mind to focus back on the problem on my wall. But, between factors and limits, images and snapshots of Before ran through my head, and distracted me enough to repeat the same equation eight times.

Holidays were no longer awkward, heartbreaking, or any other Dickensian adjective about the hardships of life, because I didn't celebrate them. No turkey on Thanksgiving, no parade with cartoon animals and frozen dancers, no football I didn't give any fucks about, and no pumpkin pie that wouldn't taste as good as my mom's. There was no ham on Christmas, no presents, no trees or lights or carols, and it was easier this way. Birthdays were spent like any other day, and only noticed by spam emails for coupons from shitty restaurants. I didn't even plant trees on Arbor Day or Earth Day. Though I would now. Because I loved trees. Not all trees though, just willow trees. Out of the well over one hundred thousand species of trees, I had a favorite, beyond the shadow of a doubt.

But now, if someone were to ask me my favorite holiday, I would answer Fourth of July. Maybe because it felt generic, and there wasn't a specific way to celebrate it, and I didn't remember huge celebrations with my parents. It's easy to do something without ghosts following you like you're Mario in the haunted house. They're big scary things when you're running, but when you face them, they whistle and shrug their shoulders like they aren't hauntings.

I was the outlier. Of the one hundred people polled on the street and asked, 'what is your favorite holiday?' my answer would be the Fourth of July. I was the reason someone would lose twenty thousand dollars. I beat Dixon's Q Test, and I met Chauvenet's criterion. Who did they even ask for Family Feud, or did they just make up numbers?

I think it was the fireworks. Something about them just appealed to me recently. Of course, it might have been Bella. It was probably Bella. And the fireworks. It really was a wonderful, underappreciated holiday, far more fun than freezing in Ass-Pen or getting sand in my shorts while reminiscing about Jesus' birth and giving presents that we would never use and only vaguely smile and nod a thanks for. I wondered if that made me a patriotic heretic.

I also wondered if it made me a Planeteer, because I wanted to save each and every forest tree and sit underneath it. I was a patriotic heretical tree hugger.

And there was nothing I wanted more, than for the numbers to come back. But they wouldn't. As frustrating as they were to have most times, I needed them. Immediately.

I needed to not think about trees or fireworks or Christmas or Jesus or Alice or Bella, but especially not Bella, but everything else on my list reminded me of her. Except for Alice, which just reminded me to keep forgetting.

So I sat there, and I pulled my hair and ran my hand against my cheek and stared at the numbers on the window without seeing them. Then I tugged at my hair and hung my head, because it was all too much. So many thoughts, swirling, constant, imagining, hoping. God, the worst was the hoping. It did nothing to help the forgetting. And I couldn't shuffle my feet, or go boxing, or run ten miles, or test the capabilities of my diver watch by throwing myself to the bottom of the world, or do anything else so monotonous it made my mind stop working, not even in the way Bella made it stop. Right now, she made it twirl, and she was across the city.

That thought made me look towards the left a little, as if I could look into her house. I wondered how big of a telescope I'd need to see her room from my room, and how many laws that broke. Twenty-three laws, debatable only with intent. And I had intent, so probably more laws than that. And none of this was concrete. None of this was right. And it scared me enough to want to slam my head against my plate glass, dry-erase covered windows. All because Alice couldn't accept the simple fact that we didn't celebrate Christmas. All of this was because of Before.

But most of all, I wanted to stop. But I couldn't. My mind was on fire, and ready to explode, and I finally understood what made people want to do drugs. I felt like I should pull the collar of my shirt away from my throat, like it was tearing into me like a much too tiny collar. I felt heavy and light and I hurt.

"How does the ranch in Montana sound?" Alice asked. Eighty-eight seconds after her last question. I felt like a computer that was about to overheat. If she would just leave, things would be better. I was an internal hardware crash. Two questions and she managed to shatter so much.

I asked Bella not to leave. What occurred to me now, was that I needed her, and that was scary, and unwanted. But she had eyes that felt like winning and tasted like defeat.

And so I fought back the stampede of thoughts and memories by thinking about the improvisational rhetoric needed to justify the algorithm in Dean's theorem, but that got swirled with thoughts of Bella and her eyes that felt like shooting stars, until I was thinking of the problem of black matter in the universe and the problem with NBC and Conan, before the unending gnawing made my head start to fill with thoughts about prime numbers and the number of times the Kinks used the world 'the' in their songs.

"Don't," I managed to say. "I can't do this." My head was killing me. Waking up to Alice deciding it was time to make a family Christmas schedule was not conducive to my life. Waking up to her being in Chicago wasn't really that great. "Alice, ask me how many fucks I give about Christmas or whatever else it is you're trying to resurrect." Alice looked up at me with just her eyes, and I realized she looked awful. Pretty, and my baby sister, but awful at the same time. "Go ahead, ask me." I waited patiently. I didn't even tap my thigh or count the seconds. For a second, hurting someone else felt better than trying to sift through the clusterfuck that was my thoughts.

"Edward," she responded calmly, "how many fucks do you give about this family?" I went to open my mouth, but she snapped her laptop closed and it felt like it took my voice. "Because I'm very curious if I can even use that title about the three of us. How many fucks do you give about Emmett and I? Because the answer should be a lot, Edward. Do you think I _want_ to give _any_ fucks about you? Do you make it easy to give any fucking _fucks_ about you?" I wondered if I should answer any of the questions, because I knew the answers, and all pointed to her getting the fuck out of my apartment, regardless of fucks given. But I assumed they were rhetorical because she was eerily calm and packing up her laptop. If I didn't speak, I could be a lamp. "Do you know how many fucks Emmett gives about you? Enough to stay here instead of moving and starting a family with Rosalie. He gives so many fucks, he is afraid you're going to roll yourself into traffic or something, and he gives so many fucks, that it would kill him if you did that, and it kills him that you're like this. The correct answer, since you can't make an equation for a family therefore I'm sure you have no idea, is all of the fucks, Edward. You give all the fucks about family." I could make an equation. The possibility thrilled me. An algorithm of domesticity. It would be helpful.

She said fuck so many times I think it lost all meaning, and that made me give a fuck. She stood and stared at me. I wondered who she was, as a person. But I started working with Boolean variables, so it didn't matter. I was on reprieve and my brain was back. In the face of uncertainty, I had the square root of the square root of the square root of pi.

"I don't celebrate Christmas," I stated, ashamed my answer was still zero.

"This is not about Christmas," she shook her head, eight times, with a smile. "Do you remember when we used to catch lightning bugs by the creek and have our own lantern? You taught me how to catch fucking lightning bugs, Edward. And you were the same person then as you are now, you just have to start giving a fuck." Twelve seconds. Twelve fucks.

"You have to be quiet, or their lights go out," I nodded, three times. "You listened then."

"I listen now," she whispered. I wanted to scoff but that seemed inappropriate, and this seemed like a moment. Bella would know what it meant. She was metaphors and rainbows.

"I have an appointment with Carlisle," I stated. "Emmett is taking me. I should go meet him soon."

"For what it's worth, I give many fucks about you, Edward," Alice sighed. I wondered if Hallmark was looking for greeting card writers. I nodded, four times.

I heard her leave and went back to wanting to bash my head against the window. I only needed fourteen hundred measly Newton's to fracture it. But instead chose to get dressed.

I went back to equations, and forgot about Alice and Christmas. For right now, my life was relatively great, and Bella would know what to do later, if I ever managed to tell her this story. I anticipated at least six pauses. So I went back.

I was a train, traveling sixty miles an hour. I left the station at 3:55pm, with a two hour and forty-five minute delay in Chicago, exactly one thousand and eighteen miles away from my starting point. I would get coffee during my delay, and they would use eight scoops of coffee to brew twenty-seven cups.

Bella was traveling two hundred and twelve miles an hour. She was a bullet train. I was the one that kills the atmosphere with the old guy with the overalls with one button, buttoned and the other hanging awkwardly as he shoveled coal and mumbled incoherently through his grossly exaggerate under bite. She left the station at the same time, with a distance of three thousand and fifty-one miles between her and Chicago. She would crash into me at 5:23am, in Akron. I wouldn't make it to Chicago, and I wouldn't get three point seven percent of a pot of coffee.

But that was yesterday. And she'd long since crashed into me, so the equation was useless. That was a shame. It was a beautiful equation, precise and looming. I wondered how I missed it, the crash, because it was painless, and that was alarming.

For some reason, I gave one fuck. It seemed like the right thing to do.

And all of this ran through my mind, and danced with an improvement on my theory; Cullen's theory. It was in physics and math books that grad students lugged around with MacBook Pro's and legal pads of proofs. It had its own chapter, and wasn't taught until the tenth week. It's not boasting if it's true. My dad said that everything after _my theory_ was a preposition, and prepositions were sins, when it boosted pride and ego. But it was all I had, so I kept the prepositions, even though they weren't really prepositions. But that was a metaphor he used, so it was open to interpretation.

I pushed away thoughts of my dad and scribbled on my window. The squeak of dry erase marker was comforting, like the feeling of when it rains, and you don't have an umbrella, and you get wet, and it's sticky wet, but not drenched; enough to want to change your clothes, but not enough to actually do it. And your clothes are sticky, but it's nice, because it reminds you of your skin.

My watch beeped and it was time to meet Emmett. Six beeps.

He was waiting, like he always was when it was time to go to my appointments. I wanted ask him if Rosalie finally let him off the leash, but that seemed mean, and for some reason, since the honeymoon and Bella, we got along.

"What did you do to Alice so early in the morning?" Emmett laughed. I wondered what Bella's eyes looked like today. Probably like caramel. Bella was a now. Alice was a then.

"She was planning Christmas, in Aspen," I shuddered. Emmett scrunched up his face. It was confusion and mild disgust.

"We don't celebrate Christmas," he waited until I hopped up in the car and folded my wheelchair and put it in the back.

"That's all I said," I fibbed. I tapped my finger against my thigh, seven times, seven more.

"Maybe we should," he shrugged again. The car was quiet. Twenty-two blocks.

"Thanks for the lift," I nodded to Emmett, three times, as I pulled myself into my sweet-ass ride. It didn't have four-wheel drive, heated seats, leather trim, or TVs in the headrests like Emmett's Land Rover, but it did get the ladies.

Of course, by 'get the ladies', I mean it gets one lady, and more importantly, it gets her to rub her Oxygen all over my Hydrogen, in public, with fireworks, literal, metaphorical, and euphamistic fireworks, and even though my belly was full of twelve point eight pounds of potato salad and it made a mess, I couldn't resent my wheelchair anymore, at least not completely. Pyrotechnics and dirty grinding.

"Are you sure you don't want me to go in with you?" Emmett asked as he leaned against his set of wheels. He was in an expensive business suit, and I assumed he had ten meetings about budget reforms and production costs in the next quarter to go to. "I haven't been to a physio session in a while." It was the truth. Emmett used to go to all of them with me, until it got depressing. Four months and forty-seven sessions after I woke up, he stopped. In his defense, I asked him to stop. By asked, I mean I demanded he not go again. He was my big brother, and I disliked the way he couldn't teach me this one thing. I tapped my thigh to the beat of the voices around us. Seventy times.

"Yes, I'm sure," I nodded, twice. "I'm going over Bella's later, so I won't need a ride after." Unless it was from her, in my wheelchair. There was a smile after that statement in my mind. Emmett got the same smile, and for a second most things didn't matter in our history.

"What the hell happened to you over my honeymoon?" he pondered, staring at me like I was a freak of nature, or better yet like a guy in a wheelchair who has a fuckhot girlfriend and no one, not even him, can figure out how he managed to get her, or for that matter, keep her. And Bella was hot, and she was beautiful, and she was smart, and happy, and warm, and her eyes sounded like lawnmowers on Sunday morning, stable and a beautiful way to wake up.

I shrugged and debated the use of Maxwell's integral. My mind was fast today; too fast.

"Want to play video games tonight? I got the new one yesterday," I shuffled back and forth on the sidewalk. Bella told me once that video games were Emmett's potato salad, and when we played, it was good. I still didn't understand much of that sort of thing.

"How did you get it?" I watched his jaw slack as he became like a little boy in a _GQ_ satire. "It's not due out for another month. It's supposed to be the best ever. Oh man…" I watched the wheels turn as he ran his giant, bear-like paw against his smooth cheek. Dad did that when he was pondering ways to get around laws Mom declared. "I'm supposed to go to dinner with Rosalie and some couple she works with." I disliked that he ended his sentence with a preposition, and it wasn't a prayer. "But I could tell her I have a meeting…"

"Don't lie to your wife," I scolded him. For a second, I felt like an adult. I wouldn't lie to Bella, and I hoped she wouldn't lie to me. I bet she wouldn't, because she told me good things, and there weren't lies. Twenty-six seconds. "Rosalie hates me enough already." There were about seventeen reasons on any given day as to why she disliked me; number one being Bella.

"She doesn't hate you," Emmett shook his head, three times. "I wouldn't have married someone who hated my brother." I wanted to disagree and tell him the truth, but I'd let him live in fantasyland. So I nodded, four times. "But I would rather not have to wear a tie, eat pizza, and play video games. Will there be beer?"

"Um, I guess?" I shrugged. Emmett smiled really big. "Bella's getting ready for her gallery show, and I'm not allowed to really drink or eat since I have surgery tomorrow, but you can do whatever you want."

"So it's a guy's night?" Emmett stood from his leaning and searched for keys in his pocket.

"I just want to know if you want to play video games," I stated. When I told Esme I loved her potato salad, she smiled really big and kissed my cheek. Asking Emmett to play video games was like telling him I bought him a stripper pole for his bedroom. Bella was good at this. I wondered how she knew. I wondered what Alice's potato salad was, but didn't think about it too much because it was hard.

"Hell yeah," Emmett agreed heartily, his face becoming stern. I didn't think conviction was ever so easily reached. Eighteen people walked around us. "I'll come up later."

"Ok," I nodded, three times and turned away. I figured he would get in his car and go, even if I stayed and waved, so I didn't.

I hated the hospital. It was sterile and it was impersonal, to a degree that I would feel ashamed to write on the windows, or correct someone who thought they knew better, and that wasn't good. It was easier to be in a place where egos were absent. And here, that wasn't possible. Its pristine walls, and smudged windows, where fingerprints hung against dull grey wallpaper made my brain work really hard. This was a place where math and numbers and thoughts attacked me, and I counted. There were seven hundred and seventeen tiles, on average, that I could see from any point, before they lines blurred to distance and I couldn't count any more. There were thirty-three seats in the waiting room, though on average, only eight were only used.

I tried to think of the best summer of my life, the best consecutive sixty-four days of my life, the best Fourth of July ever, because these thoughts, these ones about Bella, or even when I didn't have to think about complex variables, were good; they were foreign, peaceful, confusing, and just good.

"You're looking surprisingly chipper," Carlisle greeted me when I rolled into the physical therapy room. I disliked that he was wearing scrubs, because now he looked like a doctor, whereas when he wore his suits he looked like my father. Both were wrong.

"It's actually been a shitty morning," I mumbled and got ready for the workout and physical. Carlisle just nodded, four times and didn't press.

We stretched. I pretended not to care, but I tried to move. Carlisle didn't have to know that I tried. It was easier to pretend I was apathetic than fail.

"Are you sure you want this surgery tomorrow?" he cautioned as he moved my legs for me. It hurt and it was embarrassing. This surgery was Carlisle's potato salad. Each surgery was his potato salad, and I knew that before Bella had to tell me. Mostly I did them because there was no point in not trying. His logic was unbeatable.

"Yeah, it'll be fine," I shrugged and winced and tried to count my heartbeats.

"You understand the risks?" he continued as he helped me stand between parallel bars.

"Paralysis," I shrugged as best I could with my arms holding my body. Carlisle laughed. I guess I was a secret funny, because even I didn't understand how he could find that humorous.

"Wiggle your toes," he ordered as he kept a smile on his face. I closed my eyes and tried my hardest to move just one toe. I think one did, but I ignored it because it wasn't enough.

"Do you think it'll work?" I grunted.

"I think it's the best chance you have," he responded. "You've adapted well to the wheelchair, Edward, now we just have to put your mind to work on walking again. Think of it as a puzzle."

"I already know," I shook my head, "it's an unsolvable equation." Six times. I moved my foot.

"Very good, Edward," Carlisle grinned. "You haven't done that in five years."

"Overdue then," I nodded, twice. It wasn't a step, it wasn't a leap, but it was a shift of my foot, and for some horrid reason, that was a highlight.

"Esme went shopping with Bella for a dress for her opening," Carlisle said offhandedly. "Are you going?" He was cautious. I liked that I had something to talk about besides my shitty nervous system.

"I'm her date," I nodded as he moved my limbs again, stretching and testing, poking and prodding and measuring and weighing. "I asked her to be my girlfriend."

"Congratulations then," Carlisle smiled up at me. I wondered if my dad would have the beginnings of grey hair starting at the edges like Carlisle did.

"That was the right thing to do, right?" I looked at him finally, and saw him push away a smile.

"Do you like her?"

"Yes," I nodded, four times, eagerly. I didn't tell him that I frequently thought about her naked or in my bed, because that seemed inappropriate, and I'd tell Emmett that.

"Then you did the right thing," he agreed.

His assurance did nothing to make my mind slow down. Today was just bad. Too many thoughts, too unstructured, too much tossing and turning and it was only noon. I wish I knew how to pray.

"What if it hurts?" I asked. Thirty-two seconds.

"What doesn't?" he shrugged. I wondered if he was talking about the surgery. I wanted to tell him that Bella's lips didn't hurt, but that was mine, and he couldn't have it, and I wouldn't give it. I could have told him that her eyes were fireworks, but that was an innuendo, and I didn't want to be inappropriate. I would have saved that one for Emmett, but it wasn't his type of innuendo, so it was mine too.

"Nothing," I acquiesced. He smiled, and I didn't know why. I would have asked, but it seemed personal.

And someone knocked at the door, so I stood with my arms for legs and thought about Bella some more. I wanted to take her to a place where we could count stars all night, and she would get cold and wear my jacket again. I wanted to get her roses for her gallery opening. I wanted to stop thinking and feeling these things, because even though they were easy, and came like breathing, they were scary; they were like riding a roller coaster, and realizing the harness is broken on the way to the top of the first drop. And no matter what, you know that for the next two minute and twenty-one seconds, with possible loops and forces as strong as three G's, you're going to have to hold onto that fucking harness or become splatter with the lost hats, cell phones and change that fall out of people's pockets.

So I stood and tried to move. It might have been so I could run, or better yet so I could dance with Bella.

And then she was there. Bella was there.

And I didn't move, except I did. I forgot I couldn't walk, for the first time in five years, and I fell. It might have hurt, but I couldn't feel anything. My knees were skinned, and the ground was harder than I would have thought, but my embarrassment was sort of comforting, like a bed of nails.

Bella looked pretty, and I was wrong. Her eyes felt like defeat and tasted like winning. When I first saw her, before the fall, she was smiling and hugging Carlisle. I wondered if she resented the fact that my hugs weren't as good.

"Edward, are you alright?" three people rushed towards me, all asking the same question. I thought about becoming a lamp, and how welcomed it would be. I thought about Alice in my room, and how much that was horrible, and how welcomed it would be at this moment.

"What are you doing here?" I pushed Carlisle's hands away and pulled myself off of the ground. Bella recoiled slightly, but still tried to help me. My tone was mean. My mind was hot. Her eyes looked like Bambi's, when his mom got shot.

"Esme and I were going to have lunch with Carlisle. She told me you were his appointment before lunch, so I thought I'd come see you," she stated. Even over the smell of my shame, she smelled good. I collapsed into my wheel chair and tried to find some dignity. I felt all out.

"Get out," I whispered. The clank of my foot against the metal of my wheelchair was louder than my voice and provided the exclamation point I needed.

"Edward," Carlisle warned.

"I don't want to see you now," I stated, staring at my lap. Bella had a smile, but I took it. "I told you I would see you after. I don't want to see you now." I wanted to see her, but I didn't want her to see me. Semantics.

"I…" she started. I watched her flush and grab at her neck, but I was wearing her necklace. I took that too. "I didn't mean to interrupt."

"We were just finishing," Carlisle assured her.

"I have to go," I stated. I didn't want to change or shower. I wanted away from her eyes, the ones that felt like when she put her hand on my cheek, because now, they were looking at me, and more importantly, they were seeing me.

"I'll walk you out," Bella started to follow.

"No," I shook my head. I wondered if I was blushing. I felt like the kid who threw up while giving a presentation about Whale Sharks and splashed the first two rows. You never live that down, ever. I wanted to look at her eyes, at her cheeks, and her neck, but I stared at my knee.

"Edward," her voice made me stop. I didn't acknowledge Esme. She was used to the shame. Carlisle saw a glimpse of success and was egotistical. Bella looked pretty, and I wanted to tell her that, but it seemed too appropriate, and right now wasn't the time. "What's wrong?"

"I didn't want you to be here. I don't want to see you right now," I repeated. I was the doll with the pull string catch-phrase. I wanted to ask her about Alice, but now wasn't the right time for that either. It was time for a quick escape.

"Right," she nodded, three times.

"I didn't want you here," I repeated, this time with different tones and enunciations. I hoped she heard the real words.

"Why?" she stopped following me.

"I can't give any fucks," I shook my head. "I didn't ever want you here."

"I'm sorry," she shook her head, three times.

I left.


	11. The Something and the Nothing

**Chapter Eleven: The Something and the Nothing**

_Oh Sinnerman, where you going to run to?_  
_So I run to the river, it was bleedin'_  
_I run to the sea, it was bleedin'_  
_So I run to the river, it was boilin'_  
_I run to the sea, it was boilin'_

_So I run to the Lord, please hide me Lord_  
_Don't you see me prayin'?_  
_Don't you see me down here prayin'?_  
_But the Lord said, go to the devil_

_So I ran to the devil, he was waitin'_  
_I ran to the devil, he was waitin'_  
_All on that day_  
_I said, Lord hide me, please hide me_ _please help me_  
_All on that day._  
_He said, child, where were you_ _when you oughta been prayin'?_  
_I said,Lord, Lord, hear me prayin'_ _Lord,  
Lord, hear me prayin'_

_Sinnerman you oughta be prayin'_  
_Oughta be prayin', Sinnerman_  
_Oughta be prayin'_

"You done fucked up, son," Emmett shook his head, five times. His face was blank though, so I didn't know what that meant. I only nodded three times. I think I craved a good old-fashioned reprimand. And by reprimand I meant ass whooping, as Mom liked to call it. Because I was rude, to a woman, and not just any woman, a woman I would very much like to see naked, or scantily clad, or at the very least, fully clothed and sitting on top of me. My parents were doing barrel rolls in their graves.

I was twenty-three years old, and all I wanted was for my mom to smack some sense into me and reprimand me. Sometimes you miss the weirdest things when death is involved. Like when my hamster, Karen, died I couldn't sleep because there wasn't an annoying wheel squeaking in the background. I fucking hated that wheel for months. And what the hell is the point of a hamster as a pet. You can't cuddle with it, it doesn't do tricks, and it's fucking nocturnal and smells. Emmett and I used to watch it squeeze under doors, because it's eyes would get really big like one of those weird squeeze toys.

Maybe Bella would reprimand me. She had eyes that tasted like inadequacy and felt like not giving any fucks. And she could spank me. I wondered if she would understand that it'd be in a completely nonsexual way. Or a totally sexual way if she wanted. But no matter what I wanted to be told that I needed to be better. I wanted hard, rough, loud, angry, passionate, against the wall, snarling, throbbing, maddening guilt. I'm sure hookers did that sort of thing for the right price.

"I did, I did fuck up," I agreed and nodded away thoughts of spankings and Bella's eyes, which I bet now looked like fresh baked apple pie filling, and smelled like pity.

I'm glad my story was short, because I doubt Emmett could have paid attention much longer than three sentences:

Bella came to my appointment. I told her to leave. I think she cried.

It was almost a relief that he didn't pay attention though. I dreaded the logical question of 'why?'

Why did she come to my appointment? She wanted to see me. I wanted to see her too. It was harmless and a beautiful notion.

Why did I tell her to leave? She had eyes that looked like understanding, and that was too much.

Why do I think she cried? I told her I didn't want her and I left. I would have cried if she told me that. But boys don't cry. They even made a movie about that law. I never saw it, but figured it was relevant.

I tried to think of my newest algorithm, one that could predict that outcome of various combinations of quotients and chemicals. If this algorithm had eyes, they would look like Nobel and taste like Prize.

"How did you do that?" Emmett continued to jam the buttons on the controller as I shot him, twice.

"I don't suck at this game," I stated nonchalantly. He just mashed harder.

I wondered if that was genetic, the need to smash buttons, because Alice all but murdered her laptop keyboard. I may have broken a calculator or three. My fingers just get too excited with numbers, and they have to go faster and faster and harder and harder until the number I need is reached. I wondered if Bella would appreciate my educational prowess. She could be a division problem with a really long, non-repeating remainder, and I could divide all night. And break her calculator. In a not so angry sounding kind of way. Sometimes metaphors don't work out like they should.

I shot Emmett again and he huffed before letting his knuckles turn white as he pawed the buttons. Novice.

I wished he had been Bella. I would have told her how to play, and where the secret hiding places were, and the glitch on the level with the towers that made it so you could climb to the top and snipe people without being seen or snuck up on. I would have let her shoot me, at least five times before winning. I would have kissed her too. With lots of tongue. Or maybe no tongue, and just lots of lip. Seventeen kisses.

"Did you try calling her?" Emmett asked as our stats came up after the round was over.

"Yes," I nodded, twice. "And she answered, all four times I called." I restarted another game.

"And what did you say?" he continued to prod gently. I wondered if it was gently. It felt like interrogation by a really bad cop. I watched him take another swig of beer.

I liked when Bella drank beer. I only saw her do it once, at the Fourth of July party; the night I came in my pants and didn't give any fucks. Or I gave all the fucks. I enjoyed the little noises she made in my ear. I gave all of the fucks about them. It was on repeat in my mind, right now. The way Bella drank her beer after though, was just as torturous. Maybe it was because I imagined she was flushed because of me still. She had a guilty look to her when she met my eyes as her neck moved with each swallow. I ate it up. And that was a prayer.

"I didn't say anything, I hung up," I shrugged and put my controller on the ottoman. I didn't really feel like playing anymore. It was getting late, and I had a lot of sleep to avoid.

"That makes you sound like a stalker," Emmett checked his watch and threw his controller as well. "You're not going to like, you know, make a hair doll or sit with binoculars outside of her place, are you?"

I wondered if he knew about my plans for a telescope to see into her bedroom, and decided it definitely wasn't that good of an idea.

"No, I'm not that socially stunted," I snorted and shook my head, twice.

"Sometimes I'm not so sure," Emmett chuckled. I shrugged because I sort of agreed with him. I was pretty fucking stunted. "Why did you hang up? Why didn't you just say something?"

"What was I supposed to say?" I asked. It wasn't snarky or snappish; I really was curious. I also hated sentences with semicolons. They seemed like the rudest form of punctuation, and were almost as bad as ending a sentence with a preposition, if it wasn't a prayer. Almost.

"I heard that 'sorry' goes a long way," he shrugged. Emmett had curly hair sometimes, and sometimes his eyes were the same color as our mom's. Bella had eyes like knocking over all the milk jugs at the fair and winning the big prize. I wasn't sure which ones hurt worse.

"Ok, so I should have just said, 'Hey Bella, it's me, Edward, um, I'm sorry I threw a hissy fit and probably made you cry, and I probably will do it again, but I hope you still like me enough to hang out or kiss me'?" I mimicked. I think my head moved side to side on my neck and I felt like there was too much Alice in my impersonation of myself. And that was awkward.

"Yeah, sounds about right," Emmett nodded, twice.

"Do they make Hallmark cards for this?" I asked, almost serious. I would ask Alice to help, but I'm pretty sure she wasn't talking to me, and I was pretty sure Bella wouldn't appreciate a card with 'fuck' written in it about twelve times.

The front: A picture of a teddy bear holding a heart with the words 'I know I sometimes always fucking suck.'

Inside: 'but I give all the fucks about you. I'm sorry I fucked up. You're beautiful and have eyes that smell like winter. Let's fuck, please?'

It seemed like an oddly inappropriate, yet incredibly relevant card. I could censor it. Or make it a Mad Lib.

'I know I [verb] sometimes. But I give all the [noun]s about you. I'm sorry I [verb]. You're [adjective] and have [part of body] that [sense] like [noun]. Let's [verb], please?'

Which then becomes:

'I know I [swim] sometimes. But I give all the [spatula]s about you. I'm sorry I [breathe]. You're [orange] and have [toe nails] that [taste] like [tire irons]. Let's [run], please?'

"I think you should stick with flowers," Emmett pondered, quite seriously. "On the card, just write something like 'I'm sorry' or 'I miss you.' Chicks dig that shit up," he nodded as if he were giving a sworn testimony. "The less you say, the more they think you're really deep."

"Right," I nodded, three times. There was an equation there, with the amount of words used in conjunction with depth of the sender. I wondered if I could get away with sending 'I' on the card. But that seemed selfish, and too deep. 'Sorry' just felt cold and shallow. It was a flawed equation. "Did Rosalie say anything to you, about Bella?" I felt slick, like the Gulf Coast. It was almost an off-handed question that anyone would ask, and not like I was digging for information.

"Just that my dumbass brother was a fuckhead," he shrugged again. I wondered if that was a genetic trait, or if all three of us kids suffered from commitment issues or the ability to see the gravity of situations. "Or maybe that my fuckhead brother was a dumbass. I can't remember."

"Right, so that's helpful," I sighed. I wanted to taste Bella's sighs. Emmett stood to leave. He was tall.

"Bella likes you, for some reason unbeknownst to any of us," he scratched his stomach and chugged the last bit of his drink. I wondered where he learned what 'unbeknownst' meant or how to use it in a sentence, or if he could spell it. "Do us all a favor and fix your mess before you go back to your douchebag self." That seemed more on his third grade reading level.

"I'll try," I nodded, four times. Emmett let himself out with a muttered goodbye. He didn't even clean up his empty bottles or discarded pizza box. That would normally kill me, but instead it gave me something else to focus on, so I didn't mind.

Time stands still when you're waiting for something to avoid. It also stands still when you check your fancy diver watch every three point two minutes, followed my your cell phone in between each of those. It slows down even more when you try to think about penguins and all you can think of is polar bears. That's a metaphor. What it means is that time slows down to nothing when you try to solve the complexities of neutron-influenced conduction in polythrodine molecules and all you can think about is the feel of a girl's cupcakes on your hydrogen, or her oxygen on your banana split. Even though that might not ever happen again. Now my metaphors were screwed up as well, and that made time go backwards.

I found myself staring at my window. Half of it was covered in tiny symbols that described the relationship of the third axis on vector synthesis, the other half had doodles Bella drew when she came to hang out one night. If you sat in the right spot, it looked like a dinosaur was eating the skyline, a space ship was pulling a whale from the lake, and a concert was happening in hot air balloons. Bella giggled when she drew them, and wouldn't let me sneak a glance the whole time she was hard at work. I wondered if she knew that her giggle was the best thing I'd ever heard in my whole life, and all I wanted was to hear it again. That was an almost lie. Her moans were the best thing I'd ever heard in the whole world, and I wanted to hear them again, or at least record them and listen to them on repeat forever, if that wasn't creepy. It felt a little creepy, so I figured I shouldn't suggest it, or maybe play it as a joke, but have a little bit of seriousness in it so she might say yes. I really hoped she would say yes, because her moans drove me wild. And her giggle made me smile. I bet even her sneeze was cute. Time didn't move as I tried to remember each noise she made, the way her mouth looked when she was about to kiss me, or as I failed at recreating a dream of her body near my own.

Time didn't stand still though, and I counted each second.

When the sun came up, the pictures changed colors with the sky, while my symbols stayed the same.

My father once told me that the sun and the moon rose and fell at our mother's whim, because she was the center of his world. It was really the orbit and rotation of the earth that did it, but he was partial to metaphors. I wondered if that was a genetic trait. Alice was prone to hyperbole and Emmett was prone to words with less than two syllables and inappropriately adding 's's to the end of words that didn't need it, like 'sleeps' and 'hurts' and 'feets' like a toddler. Our mom did that though. Every morning, she asked if we had enough sleeps. Everytime we were sad, she asked how big our hurts were. Emmett wasn't as stupid as I accused him of being.

"I heard you fucked up," Alice's voice caught me as I tried to stop thinking about metaphors and the way I bet Bella's eyes looked when she woke up, fresh from dreams about beautiful things that were big and wondrous.

"What are you doing up so early?" I turned from my viewing spot of Bella's mural to find my sister, clad in shorts and a long sleeved shirt, still sweaty from her obvious work out.

"I wanted to run before I took you to the hospital," she pushed up a sleeve after wiping her forehead. She looked happy, and pretty. I wondered if I should tell her that, or if that was too much. Sometimes little sentences are too much.

"I can take myself," I nodded, three times.

"Yeah yeah," she shook her head, twice, "You're Mister fucking Independent." I was starting to see that her blatant overuse of 'fuck' was just her being eighteen and easily irritated that I couldn't say a simple thanks or take her interest as familial. "You're having surgery, of course I'm going to be there." I wanted to remind her that she missed twenty-seven other surgeries, but that seemed inappropriate.

"Even after yesterday?" I asked simply.

"Even after yesterday," she repeated. "My therapist says I have coping issues and an unending need to have others bend to my will due to the feeling of helplessness in my own life, and I need to accept other's opinions, and respect them for what they are. So it's either accept that you're a fuckhead or kill you."

I nodded, twice. That seemed about right.

"So you're accepting my opinion regarding Christmas?" I asked.

"Oh, God no," she scoffed. "I'm just waiting for my assassin to call me back. They're on vacation. New union and whatnot."

"I'm sure Rosalie could step in for you," I chuckled. It was funny, and I couldn't remember the last time someone made a joke of their own personal inadequacies. "She's hunting my head."

"Maybe that's who booked up Ramirez on the twenty-ninth," Alice pondered dreamily. "I should have never given Rosalie his card."

"How did you hear I fucked up?" I asked as I followed Alice into the kitchen where she started to make coffee. I hated the stuff, but let her go to it.

I wondered if Bella liked coffee, and what she tasted like in the morning. I'm sure I'd like coffee from her lips. I'm sure I'd like poison from her lips as well, but that was morbid.

"…And then Emmett called me to ask if I could take you because he had to fly to Denver. So, when I called back, Rosalie picked up, and started to tell me…" Alice prattled.

I went back to the feel of Bella's really warm lips fresh from her coffee mug, and how they'd feel on my own. I bet her eyes sparkled like a deep breath and tasted like nicotine in the morning.

"…So naturally Rosalie told me about what you did," she started the coffee after rummaging through drawers and cabinets.

"Right," I nodded, twice. "I'm going to fix that."

"You know how I'm aware of what my therapist tells me, but still don't know how to fix it?" Alice turned to me, and the kitchen was quiet. Twenty-eight seconds. I nodded again. "To fix things with Bella, tell her what made you do that to her, and ask her how to fix it. Be honest. Tell her you have no idea how to do anything right, and it won't be a total lie. Tell her you have no idea how to be a functioning, socially acceptable person, because you have dead parents and a broken spinal cord, and the emotional maturity of a twelve year old. She'll know how to fix it."

"I need to shower. I'll meet you downstairs soon," I turned and left. I hoped Alice knew that those words were really me telling her that I appreciated what she told me and I would probably do just as she said.

I showered and managed to go exactly four minutes without thinking of Bella. I got dressed and managed to forget that she probably hated me for almost two minutes and twenty-five seconds. I packed my hospital bag and failed at not remembering how she looked in my clothes. Honestly, there was nothing sexier than the look of her body in my shirt.

I let Alice drive me to the hospital, twenty-two blocks. I let her talk about random things that were important to her, and I managed to listen. She really liked books, and not the kind with pictures, but kinds with words. She also sounded homesick, for Belgium. I felt a little sadness that she considered her home to be a foreign country we forcibly exported her to like a hostage. Everyone needs a home though. Home was where the heart was, and Alice only had a heart in Belgium. That's where she got her first kiss, first date, first pair of heels, first break up, first party, first arrest, graduated, had friends. That was where she grew up and was happy, away from the fuckery we would have raised her in. I wondered if that was a prayer. I was happy with Bella. That made her my home. I wondered if she knew that she was the only place I felt comfortable, and that she was my first dry humping. I wondered if they made scrap-booking supplies for that sort of thing.

Just like that, Bella slipped back in my mind. She was like a koala, feeding on the eucalyptus of my brain. She was like the refrain of "Sex and Candy" that never stops playing when you hear it once, and it sits in your mind until you find yourself humming it, even when you don't want to be. She was the person that put a bike lock that wasn't yours on your bike, so you can't get your bike off of the lamppost and it's stuck there forever, and you have to walk through life without any hope of ever getting it back. She was like an antibiotic-resistant strain of chicken pox, one you can't forget because you itch all over, but one you're not allowed to ever scratch.

"I hope you don't die," Alice shrugged as she walked beside me towards the surgery wing I had come to know so well. "I'm sure Carlisle won't kill you. That'd really mess him up, so don't die on him. It'd be rude."

"I'll do my best," I nodded, six times. We were a polite group, or at least we tried to act it in public. And by 'we' I meant Alice and Emmett.

"And me too," she whispered. "It'd mess me up too. I can't handle anymore fucking baggage, so don't die. Don't be that guy."

"I'll try really, really hard," I assured her. I felt like her big brother.

"Alright, good," she decided. I liked that we were all emotionally stunted and used inappropriate emotions in place of what we were actually feeling. "I'm going to find the gift shop and make your room embarrassingly happy. People will walk by and think you're fucking Walt Disney!"

"I never found him attractive," I scrunched my eyebrows. Alice laughed. I smiled slightly.

"Right, that was probably a misplaced fuck," she nodded, three times. Alice shopped when she was stressed. Emmett sent her an extra credit card ever year during finals. The gift shop wasn't safe, and I was sure I would wake up to smiley face balloons and empty cards with pictures of dogs and cats on them asking me to 'hang in there'. And I would be embarrassed. I watched her walk away and filled out paper work before heading to my room.

I didn't think of Bella for thirteen minutes and forty-four seconds. Then I thought about the way she sometimes left g's off of the end of her words, and the way her face looked when I told her I didn't want to see her or her to see me. There were a million reasons why I should stay away form her, because I was clearly incapable of being selfless or at least in any way, shape, or form, stable enough to be in a productive relationship, one that was mutually rewarding and beneficial. But her lips, her legs, her laugh, her smile, her eyes, her smarts, her accent, her love of fireworks and explosions, her awkward taste in music, and her unending need of sleeps and ice cream seemed like enough reasons to want to talk to her, immediately. It made my mind spin, like on the tilt-o-whirl, where you get held in my gravitational force, like swinging a bucket of water. Only, sometimes my mind felt like it would suddenly stop spinning, mid ride, and I splashed all over the floor. The right decision would be to tell her it was too hard. The decision I was going to make was to apologize and tell her I needed her like the sunrise and craved her like a junkie.

"You fucked up, huh?" Carlisle sat down beside me after the nurses finished prepping me. I felt like Rosalie had taken out an ad in the front of the newspaper to tell everyone. It felt like a family.

"How the hell did you hear?" I scowled. He smiled and shook his head because he knew that was my only admission to a mistake.

"Alice was in the gift shop when I was walking by earlier. I got the abridged version, I think." I hated when Carlisle looked like a doctor. Scrubs and a cap with little jungle creatures only made me feel like he was sterile, and not in the clipped kind of way, but in the clean hospital, brown bottle of Lysol, kind of way. Both seemed bad. "I thought you would have talked to Bella by now, Edward. You know you have to swallow your pride one day. You're happy with her, don't be too narcissistic."

"I'll try," I agreed. I was already sick of having this conversation. Carlisle just nodded. I appreciated the fact that he didn't push me on it, or maybe he knew that Alice already talked my ear off and he felt bad. That was punishment enough.

"Are you ready?" he stood, and I realized he was tall as well.

I nodded, four times, and placed St. Thomas on the tray beside my bed. There was no room for faith where I was going.

I let them strap me to the table, and drape things, and poke needles into my skin because it was similar. For a second everything disappeared, and routine and the process before me only made me smile. This was rigid. There was no room for Bella here. She was far too beautiful for this pain.

My last thought as I counted back from ten was how beautiful she really was, and how I was painless because of her. It seemed like an inappropriate thing to think, since I wasn't talking to her and she probably hated my guts. But she had eyes like forest fire, and that was destructive in the best kind of ways.

I dreamed of nothing, and I'm sure if I could have remembered how to keep that feeling, the weightless, the empty, the static, and use it in my every day life, I might have been able to apologize to Bella.

And then there she was again, back in my head. I smelled her. It was more strawberries today, like I always imagined it to be. When I opened my eyes I saw a room filled with flowers and stuffed animals and one sleeping girl, curled in the chair beside my bed. She looked like the clouds when they're pulled apart and stretched across the sky at sunset.

"I fucked up," I swallowed the dryness in my throat and tried to open my eyes more. Unfortunately they were stuck at half-mast. I hoped the rest of me stayed that way, but Bella looked delicious.

"What?" she stirred and sat up straighter than before. I'm sure her back hurt from sleeping uncomfortably. I wondered how long I'd been out. I wondered if she'd forgive me, and then I remembered that I just had surgery, and I wondered if I was alright, or even still alive. "Oh, you're awake," Bella yawned. I like the way that sounded, and how cute she looked when she rubbed her eyes and stretched like a cat. A sexy cat.

"You're here," I tried to swallow again, more because she looked so fucking beautiful, than from the cottonmouth I was currently suffering from horridly. I wished my eyes would open and I didn't look like a strung out pedophile. Bella stood and handed me water. She even held the straw while I sipped it greedily. I wondered if that was a metaphor for our relationship.

"How do you feel?" she ran her hand along my temple when she set the glass down. I forgot that I should not want her here, and I looked like a duckling lost from its mother. I felt comfort and that was way better than the weight of my ego and pride. I smiled, the dreamy, drug induced kind of smile everyone should always have, or at least one I always had when Bella was around.

"Like an idiot," I sighed. She smiled. I started my count. One smile.

"I meant how does your body feel?" she restated her question. I wondered if she knew that I was her smartass.

"It would feel better beside yours," I sighed. "I'm sorry."

"Do you want to figure this out?" she bit her lips. I closed my eyes because I was already defenseless against her sexiness. I nodded, four times.

"Come here?" I tried to move over, but that wasn't happening, so I just patted the bed and hoped she would understand that I really meant the whole thing about needing her body beside my own. Bella slipped off her shoes and crawled beside me. I closed my eyes again when her head found my shoulder and her hand found my chest. "I love you."

I didn't even care that this could have been a dream.


	12. The Pardoner and the Condemned

**I don't own, obvi.  
Insert excuses about lack of new chapters. I have a million, and none. But that's (something).**

_As the buildings who hide you knew nothing bout time__  
__but an arrow just brushin' your chin__  
__you said, "Damn be this wind is still movin' on in__  
__To the bones and the bed of my soul."_

_Like a fox on the run from the well-informed Son__  
__with the bearin's for cannonball love,__  
__just like nobody said where that eagle was fed__  
__'Till you stood on the black cross in June__._

_And nobody said that the raven was dead,__  
__So you hid all your tears in the grass.__  
__Sure, it could look like dew, but they're laughin' at you__  
__And they'll send in their clowns when you're lost._

_You said, "Damn be this wind it's still movin' on in__  
__To the bones and the bed of my soul." _

"Are you sure I look okay?" I adjusted my tie tighter on my neck then loosened it, twice more before finding that magic balance between strangulation and being put together enough. I strained my neck and looked down my nose and made angry looking faces in the mirror trying to get it just right. It felt like adjusting a noose. I wish Bella would tie my tie for me. But that felt redundant. I wondered if she knew how to do that sort of thing. I'm pretty sure all girls know how to tie ties. Alice knew how to tie ties. Rosalie knew how to tie ties. My mom knew how to tie ties. Mostly, I wanted someone to tie my tie for me in a redundant kind of way.

"You shouldn't even be going," Alice snorted in the sisterly kind of way that some might interpret as bitchiness, but others might know was really concern, with just an overpowering tone of bitch. Every meal ordered from Alice came with that as a garnish. There was no sending it back to the chef either, even if it wasn't was you ordered, so I just ate it awkwardly.

"_You_ shouldn't even be going," I repeated and turned to my sister.

"What are you, five?" She looked almost disgusted. "You had surgery not even three weeks ago and you're taking pain killers like a future cast member of some shitty vh1 show." That was a lie. I was taking them at a rate of someone who just got off of a shitty vh1 show.

"Will you just go call for the car?" I shook my head. I wasn't smiling, but I was in a way that really mattered. And that wasn't an innuendo, although I hoped it would be eventually. Alice left and I appreciated that.

I went back to adjusting my tie and wishing Bella was here to do it for me. I wondered if she knew how pretty I'm sure she looked. I would tell her. I was going to tell her tonight that she was the most beautiful girl in the world. No, the most beautiful woman in the universe. That seemed big, yet entirely true. Like gravity. That no matter what she was wearing, she knocked me off my chair and made my knees weak. I hoped she would laugh at that. That's what I would tell her. I should write it down so I don't forget. I was in dire need of her thinking I was clever.

I liked the clothes that I picked out because I looked like James Bond, and that alone was worth how much it cost. Alice said a tuxedo was inappropriate for a function that wasn't formal formal. I didn't know that repeating a word made it more of itself. I could tell Bella she was sexy sexy, and hope she understood that it was a compliment. Sexy sexy sexy. Three times made it a law. Instead, Alice said it was informal formal, like a wedding, if you're not in the wedding party. Invitations should have illustrated examples of what to wear. No one wants to be that person who wears a tux when it wasn't necessary, and no one wants to be the guy in flip flops when it's inappropriate. But I had Alice, and that meant I didn't need a diagram. And I had Bella, and this was her gallery opening, so I was with the star of the night, so I could wear whatever I wanted.

But I had to wear something that said, 'Bella, please want to take my pants off with your teeth.' I wish they had a section like that at the store. The 'get fucked, stud' section. I would shop there. I wondered if Bella shopped in the 'give your boyfriend blue balls' section. I assumed she did. I also wondered if the constant state of teal would ever go away. That was a prayer.

I picked up the roses and placed them in my lap as I wheeled myself towards the elevator to meet the car. I wondered how many roses I would have to get Bella to make up for my emotional deficiencies and inadequacies in the department of transportation. There had to be a formula there; the ratio of smiles to frowns, squared, divided by the expression of the difference in the size of her forgiveness and my selfishness, all rooted. And let's just say I wasn't afraid to whip out my selfishness in a gym shower. Nothing inadequate there. Intimidating, even.

But Bella had eyes that sounded like Jeff Buckley, and worse yet, felt like him too. So there becomes the point where none of the flowers in the world could really outweigh my selfishness, and that made my chest feel like it needed to be ripped open, like maybe next time Carlisle was doing surgery, I should flip over, and let him dig around my chest cavity a little bit to see if there was some lead, or my lungs had a hole and were filling up with guilt. You'd be amazed at the type of things one can pull from an abdominal cavity. Bella had eyes that tasted like autumn and sounded like spring and felt like summer and looked like winter. I bet if Carlisle dig around deep enough he'd find a pile of words I choked and swallowed when she smiled at me. And that my intestines were filled with quicksilver when she left, even if it was just for a second. And a lion that scratched my liver when another guy looked at her, a swarm of fuzzy moths that flickered around my heart in my lungs when she kissed me, even just on the cheek, a python that wrapped himself around my stomach, and squeezed and squeezed everytime she was around. Mostly, I wanted the zoo out of my body. I wanted all foreign objects removed.

But Bella had eyes like Canada, and a tongue like Brazil, and I liked those, and they were foreign, and that was okay.

"I'm going to invite Bella to Thanksgiving," Alice announced as I dissected and compared the Gross Domestic Product of Portugal and Denmark.

"We don't celebrate Thanksgiving," I adjusted my tie, twelfth time, and continued to compare inflation. With the Gini coefficient, Denmark was remarkably average.

"Right, well normal families do, and I thought that was what you were working towards," Alice smiled that smug sort of smile that makes you feel like you should rhyme in a Dr. Seuss kind of way. I wondered how normal I could be, even heavily medicated.

"Right," I nodded, four times, and tried not to vomit. My tie acted like a noose, which was actually needed at this point, sort of like the pull string on a garbage bag. I pulled it tighter so lunch would stay down.

"Good," Alice nodded, twice, and her smile grew in proportion to the nods in the car, which did nothing to make me want to stop thinking about ratios of letting Bella down.

And fuck, I just wanted the prepositions at the ends of sentences to stop, because sometimes they were prayers, I think, and they were the worst kind of prayers because they involved going down and no sort of sexual innuendo at all.

"Can we have apple pie instead," I started.

"Of pumpkin?" Alice finished the sentence that joined the other phrases that seemed to dig themselves graves in my small intestines. "Yes," she nodded, eight times. But it acted in reverse in the graph of time versus her smile size, which I didn't appreciate as much.

So I went back to now, instead of the Before. That wasn't a sentence that ended in a preposition, because it was capitalized, and when you capitalize something, just like when you say a word twice, it changes the meaning. There's 'before' and then there is 'the Before,' just like formal formal and sexy sexy sexy sexy. It's all Greek.

I watched the lights and the cars and the world and I thought about watching really bad movies with Bella while I was resigned to bed rest. I thought about how she laughed sometimes, and ducked her head because it was so funny she didn't want to share her smile. And I liked that. And I liked more that my fingers could lift her chin and kiss her teeth when she did, and it made me catch her laugh like a cold. I liked that things were easy, and things were hard, and that she did these big things like painted, and liked to talk about robots. Mostly things just happened, and we were there when they did, and it felt good. And I wasn't sure if this is what love felt like, but I almost was pretty somewhat aware that it was something like this. Because I was as far south form Realityville and Logictown that'd I'd ever ventured, and that's what love is, right? It's this happening thing that happens while you happen. You happen. That's all you do everyday. You happen, and things happen, and you do things to make things happen, and when you love someone, things happen to both of you, and you get to be happy, while things happen, and when bad things come, you show up at the hospital and eat crappy jello and sleep in a small bed while other things happen outside and you unhappen. And that's where love is. Those little moments of unhappening, but happening. That there are two different lives of happen, two different happenings of things and doing of happenings, and they fit together like the teeth of a zipper, and then things happen, and unhappen.

And that was love, right? If we were labeling things, that's what it was. On the Supply and Demand curve of our happenings and unhappenings, Bella supplied the unhappenings, and I demanded the happenings, and we unhappened together when she exported and shifted my demand, and there's an innuendo there. I liked when she shifted my demand. I liked to touch her supply. And I liked when the marginal benefit was maximized for us both, because that was an unhappening. Believe me…it was very much unhappening, and almost nonexistent. But we were on the curve, we were efficient and allocating resources effectively, and that's love too, right? When your GDP and production possibilities curve are efficient.

I adjusted my tie as we got out of the car. As soon as we were inside, Alice went looking for someone she thought she knew, and I went looking for the only person that could get me to feel like a million bucks. I've heard that used before, but I wasn't sure if I had to adjust for my income.

There were too many people there, among pale wood flooring and much too bright white walls and hot overhead lights that try to cook you into buying artwork you really don't like. But I didn't not like Bella's. I thought it was amazing. I actually thought it was beyond words, more than I would ever expect fingers and hands that held my own to ever create. I actually liked hers enough that I would buy it without it being shown in an oven.

I pulled on my tie.

Everyone else seemed to like her work too, and I wondered if I should be proud or jealous. I went with proud, because between every other emotion, I couldn't handle another animal.

Unfortunately for Bella, she was the prettiest thing in the room, and when I saw her I could give no fucks for such things as artwork. I did give many fucks for the way her cupcakes and brownie looked in that dress that should have really been on display in a gallery of the gods, because it was like _Cake Boss_ was on display, or had been at work, and God, I was hungry. I wanted to pull my tie off, because this constant transitioning between breathing and not was unejoyable.

Then she smiled at me when she caught me staring, and I was without the need of any air at all. And that felt weird, because I should have been at home, and not with all these people, that didn't make me nervous when she looked at me like that, and excused herself from conversation with impressive looking older men and hipsters with notepads taking notes of importance about her brilliance, and pushed through the crowd towards me, and I should have been at home, where it was safe, and happening.

"You look handsome," Bella smiled. It was a smile that made me smile because it started really slowly, like something really bowled her over, something she never expected, and her only response was to smile. The way her lips moved, in pretty little smiles. And she kissed me, right in the middle of all those people, with somewhere over a hundred other happenings, we unhappened, and she kissed me.

And she straightened my tie and blushed after I held the back of her neck to me a few seconds longer than socially acceptable. I lifted my chin and let her adjust it, because that's what girls do, no matter how straight it is, they like to keep their hands busy when presented with awkward situations.

"You look beautiful," I managed to murmur and stick my flowers out awkwardly. Bella smiled again and kissed my cheek. "I mean, you are the most beautiful girl in the universe." I felt my chest puff with pride when I realized I managed to say what I planned. Bella shook her head and rolled her eyes, a reaction I wasn't sure I anticipated. I assumed a dramatic Scarlett O' Hara collapse in my lap with a variation upon _take me to bed or lose me forever you big stud_.

"No, I'm not," she shook her head. "And that's okay."

"Can I correct myself then?" I liked how she played with rose petals.

"Of course," she nodded, three times, in mock authority. Is it mock if it's real but she doesn't realize it?

"You're the only girl in my universe, and in any galaxy, at least to me, you're the most beautiful," I shrugged at the end because it felt necessary. "I just think you're pretty."

"Thank you," she whispered and kissed me again. It was close enough. I felt like I could go home; mission accomplished. But I couldn't.

For the rest of the night, I was near Bella, and not because I followed her around, but because we both seemed to just move near each other. We could be in separate conversations, but I could catch her eye, and smile, or she would stop and walk with me around the art, and we unhappened, after a few hours of happening.

I didn't think about math too much, because this wasn't about me. It was almost like acting. I was the boyfriend of a talented up and coming artist, and they would all expect me to act accordingly, as a happy, beaming, proud man who couldn't believe someone was capable of producing such wonders, and that was what I could be for Bella, because I promised. When you promise, you do something, no matter what, because all you really have are promises at the end of the day. You start breaking those, and even I would have nothing to live for anymore. I could keep a promise.

But I wanted to be better, and I wanted to be what Bella needed, and I could try. And I felt normal, ignoring impulses, digging my hands into my thighs, scratching my neck and forgetting counting each second, nine hundred and sixty-eight, stop…five hundred and twelve.

Until Bella told me we could go, I played my part, and I felt good, because in the car she put her head on my shoulder, and asked to stay at my place. For a second I scolded myself for not asking her to stay first, but then calmed myself with the idea of being a gentleman. She held my hand, and even though it was dark, and I couldn't see them, I'm sure her eyes looked like calm. I felt like calm, which was weird considering I hated parties and basically any form of human contact, and I had just spent a whole night surrounded by people.

The best part of the night was when there was no noise. When there was quiet, and we didn't have to talk, we just sat in a car and let lights pass, illuminate us, then disappear, rhythmically, methodically, like petting a cat or burping a baby. It was peaceful, and sleepy, and felt anything but wrong, and I liked it, because for once, I didn't think.

I liked the way Ernie greeted both of us, and Bella held my hand the whole way to the top of my apartment.

I liked the way we went straight to the bedroom, and it felt like something we could do for a long time, like it was natural, like nerves didn't have a place here, like this was breathing, like this is something we decided was happening and unhappening and everything and nothing. It just felt.

All there was was the clang of the keys on the coffee table, the click of the door behind us, the dark, the well known route to the bedroom, one flick of a lamp. There's something pretty beautiful in routines you never realize until you feel it happen, and want it to happen more than once.

"So, Alice invited me to Thanksgiving," Bella kicked off her heels and smiled slightly behind her nervousness at bringing up the time honored holiday of turkeys and thankfulness, both of which she knew I detested. I liked the words, and I liked how she looked in my bed. Bella in my bed.

"She told me she would," I nodded, twice. "I didn't think she would ask so quickly though, at your gallery. I guess she didn't want you to get booked up or something." Bella laughed, and I wondered what part of that was funny. But it sounded nervous, and I wondered if she thought I would try to put the moves on her, and that made me want to laugh with her because that was crazy.

I watched her squirm her feet and stare out the window, until I followed her gaze and we happened.

"Do you want me to come?" I wondered if that was an innuendo, and I swallowed my scream that said, 'Dear God and all things Holy, that's all I want,' and continued staring out the window for one more second.

"Well, yeah, because I love you," I shrugged and in an instant reached to pull my tie tighter.

Bella stared at me with eyes that felt like a shotgun, and sounded like Kurt Cobain.

I wanted to put my hand on my chest to make sure I was real, but I couldn't move my arms. It was probably a stroke. Yes, a stroke. I wanted to feel my lungs take in some sort of oxygen, but they probably weren't working either. I wanted to dig my nails into my skin and inject some breath into me, because her eyes sounded like a ledge, and looked like a push. Her eyes looked like fear, and tasted like loathing. More importantly, they sounded like the end and looked like the commercial for the Human Society with Sarah McClachlan singing, where all you want to do is change the channel or adopt forty-five kittens and three-legged dogs. And I hated that commercial.

And then her back straightened, and that felt like a correction. And even worse, still tasted like the end.

Then the motherboard crashed, and you can't stop that.

"This is love, right? I mean, even if it isn't happening and unhappening. This is love, even if it is transient or leaving of running away at some point, for now, we are unhappening, and that's love, right?" I pulled my tie because it was keeping words in my belly, and I needed the zoo to leave. And Bella had eyes like apple juice and chocolate chip cookies. "I mean, love is when you have things inside of you, eating your insides and fluttering all over your veins and you feel like your brain is going to melt and come out your ears, and you feel like your bones are made of glass. But it feels so damn good and weird and foreign, all you can do is want to be Brazilian, right?"

Bella had eyes that I'm sure looked like doubt, and tasted like fleeing, so I was afraid to meet them, and stared at my knees. I wanted to count the time passing, because there could be an equation there, for how long it took me to completely Hiroshima my relationship. Because if any metaphor could be created, I had a mouth like the Enola Gay and a trigger finger like John Wilkes Booth.

And then a different pair of knees happened next to mine, and a finger unhappened under my chin, until my eyes happened to meet eyes that looked like a question, and tasted like the answer. And little hands that made really pretty art, that liked to scratch my head when I was sleeping, and that felt really big, happened on my cheeks. And fingers unhappened to dance with my hair, and thumbs happened to my temple. And a worry line happened between Bella's brow as she stared into my eyes. Except hers were behind a window, and glassy, and looked like the kids from the _Cat in the Hat_ when they're looking out the window at the rainy day before their lives get fucked straight to Hell. And her lips were too soft to graph, which scared me even more, so I tried not to look there as well.

Then her hands were gone, just like the ridge between here kissable eyebrows, if eyebrows were kissable, and that didn't make me sound like a really awkward fetishist. And after that my tie was gone, and the animals were in their cages, and I could breathe. A hand unhappened upon my chest, and pushed gently. It felt like a charge to three hundred, clear.

"Yes," Bella nodded, four times.

I nodded four times and took a breath.

That's sometimes all you can do.


	13. The Stalagmite and the Stalactite

**I don't own, obvi.  
/disclaimer.**

**I got interviewed by Swimom7, the best mom in the whole world, for SYTYCW. She is the epitome of awesome and I would surely be a goner without her. I am far from eloquent, but I did have chicken nuggets. Link on the prof, bros. There is some insights into sort of what I might think about what I'm trying to say…sort of…  
/narcissism.**

**Also, thank you, for the recommendations. My mind gets blown with each one. If I had the emotional capacity to give hugs or feel, I would hug each person who recommends me.  
/gratitude.**

**I apologize to those living in the San Joaquin Valley. But it does smell.  
/truth. **

**This is fiction.  
/obvious.**

**Chapter Thirteen: The Stalactite and the Stalagmite**

_Can you lie next to her__  
__and give her your heart,__  
__as well as your body?__  
__And can you lie next to her__  
__and confess your love, your love,__  
__as well as your folly?__  
__And can you kneel before the king__  
__and say I'm clean?  
__  
__But tell me now, where was my fault__  
__in loving you with my whole heart?_

_A white blank page __  
__and a swelling rage…__  
__you did not think __  
__when you sent me __  
__to the brink.__  
__You desired my attention __  
__but denied my affections.__  
__  
Lead me to the truth and I __  
__will follow you with my whole lie._

"I want to know what it's like," Bella whispered. I kept my eyes closed, and tried not to smile, but it was like trying to not simplify radicals; it must be done.

Her fingers felt like logarithms. And I loved logarithms.

It didn't feel like a whisper though, because we were just being really quiet; the world felt really quiet at these moments. But it all seemed to be normal volume. Sometimes voices can be three inches, and words can be so swollen, they don't really need to be poked and prodded until they scream, but rather hugged, and iced in tiny voice boxes.

And her fingers felt like what I bet a record player's needle felt like to a fresh vinyl record. But we sounded like the moments before the music starts, where the ridges are filled with nothing.

She traced along my eyebrows, down my nose, over my cheek bones, along my jaw, but only enough to get that dusty, husky static that comes when Dylan is putting the strap on his shoulder, straightening his harmonica holder and taking a deep breath. I wondered if her fingertips were sensitive enough to pick up the tiny ridges of my inadequacies or better yet the complete calm that came in these moments. I bet they could, because she had soft fingers, all-knowing fingers, gentle fingers, and gentle things are good.

We were that tiny cough and throat clearing time, before the music changed the world and pushed walls around by expanding rooms. It was that calm, before Sam Cooke broke his own heart, before he plead with destiny to bring that sweet lovin' on home, before he makes promises upon promises, where he stares at the microphone, just as the controller presses record, before the nod to the piano and trumpets, that moment of absolute silence before the world shakes; the silence that has a sound. That's what played on repeat right now. The second you can hear if you listen really hard, and hear Otis Redding inhale as he strangles a microphone to find a little tenderness. We were the background noise, watching him on the dock of that bay.

I felt like a record that only played silence. And sometimes that's alright. There are moments too sad for a score, swollen seconds with swollen words too sore for measures and decrescendos and cadence, instants only punctuated by the stop of the world.

And I didn't even want to compute the sinusoidal waves associated with each pitch I was thinking in. And that was a prayer.

I did want to gently measure the desserts in my bed and have a morning snack that consisted of cupcakes. Or cookies. I didn't know what those represented, but it could only be delicious.

"I just want to know what it's like in there," Bella sighed, which was just as quiet as the first notes of any song. Her fingers on my forehead felt like getting a cold and skipping school. I wanted to laugh, because I could barely survive living in my head, and wished to be in hers, just to figure one part of her out. And that was a prayer.

If our minds were geographical locations, mine was Fort Yukon and hers was Fresno. Mine was a frozen, unprotected blink of land that brutally beat the hardest men and was accessible by dogcarts. Seriously, who goes to places that the only means of transportation is a team of dogs? But that's what my mind was, with it's pelting, stinging slush of snow and complex fractal arrangements and biting, limb-stealing air of social insecurities that froze the already stuttered words in my damp lungs. I had an average temperature of just thirty-one degrees. That was just below freezing. And that was me, the almost guy, the frozen guy, the emotionally stunted tundra, buried in permafrost and having much too chapped lips.

Hers was a city no one ever heard anything about, not mysterious at all, not a hot spot travel destination, but a simple layover city on your way to something better. No one really knows where Fresno is, just in the valleys, not near the ocean, or better yet, the boring part of California. A city that just is. And that was good, because how complex is Fresno? But for me it was a fucking labyrinth, and in a bad way, though Bella was far from simple or just a layover city for me, I liked that her mind wasn't preluded by adjectives that might be included with New York or worse yet, Detroit, or the worst all over, Sarasota. Fresno didn't have slush and dog sled teams. It was the epitome of normal. I just liked that she was constant. And I wanted to visit Fresno, or maybe a little south, possibly her Bakersfield. Yes, her Bakersfield, a name which brought only images of cupcakes and brownies.

"_Pain in my heart, just won't let me sleep_," I threw her sigh back at her, gently, like a return volley, trying to distract myself from flight plans and Expedia bookings to Bakersfield.

She smiled, and it felt good. No metaphor needed, because it was that good kind of thing that just happens, and you look at it, and it's all you need, and to define it would just ruin it a little. Mostly, it was private, and a smile that she made when she was wearing my shirt, and laying beside me in my own bed, and it was ours, so there was that.

"Right here?" Bella asked, almost seriously, as she traced out the cartoon version over my actual heart. I nodded. "Why?" I think she was serious, and that look of concern was pretty, and foreign, like Toblerones.

"I'm happy," I smiled. Nothing had ever felt like more truth, and though it only fourteen and two thirds perfect of the vital capacity of my lungs to say, I felt breathless from such honestly.

"Then it's not pain," she scolded me absently and shook her head a little bit. "It's the opposite."

"Feels the same."

"Yeah," she nodded, "that happens a lot. The things that make you saddest, usually made you happiest."

"Or they leave."

"I'm right here, Otis," she shifted and kissed the skin that still tingled in the shape of a heart. I liked that her lips were really warm, and wet. Mostly, it was real. It was the kind of weight that you need when you feel unreal. You're this guy, in this bed, just talking and laughing and occasionally kissing your girlfriend, and in the back of your head, you can't push down the pessimism that she's a Russian spy, or worse yet, she doesn't love you back, or that she isn't feeling as scared as you, or that she's going to leave, and you get out of the moment, and this makes you feel like you aren't real. But then Bella kissed my chest, and that weight there reminded me I was alive, and that's important sometimes, to be reminded of being alive and real and tangible.

"Thank God for Fresno" I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against hers, where my nose touched the side of hers, and I could feel my own breath on her cheek. I liked her arms that went around me, and how she felt in mine. And I liked the music that played between us, because it was like air. But better yet, it wasn't the kind that made noses or fingers turn black and fall off. And that was a prayer.

"_These…arms…of mine_," Bella whispered and giggled in a crescendo. I felt her nose scrunch up like it always did when she tickled herself. And then we weren't the silence before the song anymore, and I liked that even more, because when you feel someone you love pressed against your own body, the world gets to be a loud place. You get to hear their breathing, and their thoughts, and more importantly their laugh, and you think it's cute. And you hope they feel the same way. "_Just be my little woman, just be my lover_," Bella crooned and pulled away from me, holding up a fake microphone.

"You've butchered yet another classic," I smiled and pulled her back as she pushed against me with a look of indignation, sort of like a cat you just want to snuggle with, but who is much more interested with sitting on the other side of the couch.

"If by 'butchered' you mean 'improved,' then yes, I'll take your compliment," she moved until she was laying on top of me, sort of like a cat you've given up all hope on ever loving you does in the middle of the night.

I felt realer than ever now, with so much weight on my chest. Mostly, it was Bella's chest on my chest that was distracting and real. Funbags. They were. They really were bags of fun. Goodies. They really were delicious. Cookies. Cupcakes. I would weight a ton.

"You're the most comfortable thing in the universe," Bella nuzzled my chest, and her nose was cold. And that felt nice against my shoulder, even if it reminded me of the tundra.

Mostly, it was the fact that she felt collapsed on top of me, and that felt like being swallowed, in a good way, with no innuendo. Or a little bit of an innuendo.

It was also a bit of pride. I was more comfortable than a Sleep-Number bed. That's a pretty big assertion. I wanted to call her on it, but then again, I sort of liked being something to someone, so I just kissed the crown of her head.

I wondered if she'd ever been on one of those Tempurpedic beds that you could put a glass of wine on, and jump and jump and jump to your hearts content, and the glass wouldn't knock over. I'd spill, no doubt.

"I never want to get up," she whined, "I don't even care if I'm too heavy and I'm squishing you right now. Just shut up and take it."

"I like it," I promised. I also liked her bluntness and how 'shut up and take it' had become a favorite saying of hers since playing video games with Emmett.

"Tell me something good," Bella whispered. She pulled her arms under her chest, like she was freezing, and her knees held tight around my waist. I liked that part a lot.

"You smell like me," I ran my fingers along the back of her neck, down her spine, and tracing her hips. It was like riding the 99 through the Central Valley, stopping at all of my favorite cities, Fresno to Porterville, just shy of Bakersfield. Four hundred and eight miles of San Joaquin Valley heaven.

Her stomach moved, as she laughed against my own.

"And that's a good thing?" she snorted and sat up, pushing on my chest. "I don't want to smell like a boy."

"Well, I mean, I think it's good," I stuttered and tried to not look confused. "I mean, because that means you've been around me and I rubbed my scent on you, like in the wild."

"Are you…?" Bella made another cute face, which I would have noticed had I not been realizing I was sounding very creepy. "Are you referencing animal mating techniques?"

"No," I shook my head, five times. "I was just saying that my appreciation of you smelling like me, or like you've taken a shower in my shower, and you know, used my stuff, sort of is a genetic, survival instinct, where man appreciates what is his."

"So I'm yours?" Bella cocked her head and sat up straighter. All of her shifting did nothing to make me forget mating habits.

"Well, yeah, but not in the bad way," I promised. "Just in the good way, like I'm yours."

I think I saw her debating whether or not I was being serious. But she smiled, and it would have paralyzed me had a slippery road not already done that for her. It's like when a song comes on the radio that you really need to hear; only you don't know you need to hear it until that moment. That was what she always felt like when she decided to take what I said as simply me not knowing what to say.

"I'm yours." It was a statement. I appreciated that even more than my smell. She snuggled back to being the weight on my chest, but the good kind. I appreciated that too, and assumed that's why they called it Thanksgiving.

"You could bring your own stuff over here," I ventured to interrupt our song again. I tried to whisper, but sometimes words know how full they are supposed to be, and the refuse to be quiet. "So you didn't smell like a boy."

"Yeah," she nodded and took a big breath. "I could."

"But not everything," I clarified, because that was needed.

"Like I would ever share my teddybear pancake maker with you," Bella scoffed. And just like that she rested her head back on my chest and went back to smothering me. And I liked that I felt like a teddybear pancake, and she was like butter, but the good kind, or maybe the bad kind, because she clogged my arteries and made my heart stop. Either way, I liked that we melted into each other.

"I've never seen your apartment," I whispered again. It was a fact. I wondered if that should make me sad or not. It really didn't, just curious.

"There are stairs," she sighed. It was a fact. I wondered if that should make me sad or not. It did.

"Right," I nodded, twice.

"And it's not where as nice as your place."

"But it has a teddybear pancake maker," I reminded her. My place was severely lacking in most things of that nature. Mostly, I just had a dog sled team.

"You can come over tomorrow," she offered. She couldn't see my smile, but I wanted her to. And that was a prayer. "I'm sure we can figure out the stairs."

"Honest?" I asked, must too excitedly. It felt like Christmas, but that was a different holiday.

"Honest," Bella agreed. "But now, we need to get up or Alice will be in here, and I'm not sure how much holiday spirit you can handle."

"Zero," I mumbled, "The correct answer is zero holiday spirit."

"That was going to be my guess," Bella smiled, just half, as she dismounted. I suddenly had a Central Valley sized crater in my chest, but the bad kind. Just her hand trailed on my chest and her eyes hung on my face. "Today's going to be fine. Think of it like the cook out on the Fourth, but inside, and instead of hot dogs and potato salad, we'll have turkey and stuffing."

"Will there be a trip under a tree?" I suddenly perked up at the thought, but remembered Thanksgiving didn't require any sort of arboreal decorations.

"No sir," Bella blushed. "Now get dressed. We were supposed to be at Emmett's fifteen minutes ago."

I didn't move though, not until she was out of the room. For as long as I could, I wanted to pretend that this was perfect. But that's how it goes. Even Batman gets punched a few times. And no matter how much I wanted to be normal, I wasn't. Bella got up and walked out of the room to change, and I pulled myself up and heaved myself into my chair. No one likes to be reminded of their own mortality. It's nice to forget it, every now and then though. It's like having handcuffs on and sitting in the car; you don't notice you're chained until you try to reach in your pocket for a piece of gum.

Maybe everyone is chained though, and it's just easier for me to see it because my chains are physically heavy.

But I didn't want Bella to ever feel chained. And I think that's something about love.

This was my normal though, so I got ready as I had for the past five years, and went to meet Bella in the kitchen. I liked the calm that came near her.

When I was around her, even just holding her hand in the elevator, it didn't feel like Thanksgiving, and I was thankful for that more than anything. I wondered if that was ironic.

I wanted to tell her about a lot of things, like when Emmett almost choked on a wishbone when we were kids and Alice was still in diapers. Or about how my dad looked when he carved a turkey. Or more importantly, that I was sad about all of that, but at the same time, I wasn't dreading today as much as I originally thought I would.

It felt inappropriate to tell her that I had an irrational fear of the giant balloons in the parade or that my productivity at work had since gone down by twenty-three point eighty-eight percent since we'd been dating, but my mind was stuck on bakeries in the 559 area code.

I didn't know which set was more inappropriate or would make her feel worse. I wondered if I could make odd-functions out of each set and pick and choose. It wouldn't matter if I made a function.

"Hey, where'd you go?" a soft tug on my ear lobe and I turned to meet Bella's cocked head and slight smile.

"Fresno," I gave her a mirror smile right back, because I wanted her fingers back on my ear. And by fingers, I meant teeth. And by ear, I meant dick. And by teeth, I mean mouth.

"Nothing good comes out of Fresno," Bella laughed.

"Steve Perry," I corrected.

"No shit?" Bella's smile grew. I liked that my useless knowledge of the lead singer of Journey could do that. I nodded.

"Are you allowed to swear on a holiday?" I followed her towards Emmett's door. I heard noises, and what sounded like a herd of zebras, which was alarming.

"I think you can swear anytime, if you really commit to it," she explained. I liked the theory.

"Why aren't you with your family for Thanksgiving?" I asked innocently. The idea of sins made me think of her father. The idea of sins made me think of my father.

"Because you need me," she shrugged. I didn't like how sad she looked. I didn't like that she was right. I didn't like a lot that happened in those three seconds, but mostly, I didn't like that I needed her.

What do you do when you need someone and they know it, yet they don't need you?

So I sat there, stunned for a second. It was frank, it was brutal, it was honest, and better yet, the way she said it was so innocent and full of conviction, it made me feel even smaller.

And I was a horrible person.

"Are you ready for today?" Bella smiled when we finished moving down the hallway and got to Emmett's door. She had this pep and excitement to her voice and step that made me feel even worse. Like I'd just punched a basset hound.

She deserved a real Thanksgiving.

"Zero fucks," I murmured and set my jaw. I felt it.

That was the wrong answer though, and I knew it as soon as it left my mouth, because Bella's pep was lost for a second. I wondered if she knew what she was getting into when she agreed to go out with me on the balcony at that wedding.

"We don't have to go," she looked worried, like a school nurse who smells an outbreak.

The door flew open before I had a chance to take her up on that offer, or better yet, before I could swallow my ego and for once put her before myself. So that helped in making me not feel guilty…

"Do you two own watches?" Rosalie looked back and forth between our faces awkwardly, probably sniffing the awkwardness that sat in the air like the smell of the California happy cows that resided in the Valley. The air was solid mass of awkward. It was like being encased in carbonite, but being nowhere as awesome as Han Solo.

"Yes," I nodded, four times and held up my wrist, which had my diver watch. I checked it to make sure it was still working. The weight of everything that would never be said or felt or noticed or acknowledged that had passed was denser than the Mariana's trench, and I wasn't sure my watch could function under such conditions. But it did; dutifully. Thank God it was bright, or I would have never known what time I realized Bella couldn't love me. I couldn't let her. I wouldn't make her.

"Come on in," Rosalie opened the door wider. I heard Emmett and Carlisle and Alice. I heard dishes and sizzling and a can opening, and it was much too loud. And the bad kind.

"Esme was just asking about what you were going to help with, Bella," Rosalie skillfully guided Bella towards the kitchen.

With a look over her shoulder and a steady smile, Bella was gone, and I went to the living room.

Isn't that how it always is though, things end in the blink of an eye, and you just take a step forward with a steady smile and pretend you really don't need to breathe. I tried to sift through the wreckage of how bad I was feeling about being a complete prick, but there was so much fuckery not even I could keep it straight.

"Edward, how are you?" Carlisle greeted me with a big smile and handshake. I wondered how my father would have greeted me. I wondered if he would like Bella. I knew the answer to one of those.

"Can't complain," I smiled quickly and let it drop, just like his hand. "But it's early." He laughed. I wondered if he knew how true that statement was.

"Is Bella here?" he looked behind me as if she were going to pop out from behind my chair.

"Rosalie already has her doing forced labor in the kitchen," I shrugged.

"Would you have ever guessed we'd be having a Thanksgiving together, planned by my wife?" Emmett handed me a pop and laughed as he elbowed me and sat down.

"No," I shook my head, five times.

"I guess Alice is right, about this whole family thing, huh?" Emmett mused as he turned from me and back to the television where some team was playing some other team. I felt extremely American.

"Mom and Dad would have wanted it this way," I nodded, four times. And as the words came out of my mouth I understood.

"Right," Emmett nodded, his smile slacking, as if he figured it out as well.

Fucking Alice.

A few minutes later someone got a penalty and whistles blew loudly and Carlisle and Emmett went back to talking, as if things were going to be normal from then forth. I liked it.

"Happy Thanksgiving, Edward," Esme kissed my cheek as she joined us in the living room after much too long of watching football.

"Happy Thanksgiving," I returned out of good manners with a smile. I didn't like how much it felt motherly, and how disrespectful I felt thinking such. So I shook my head and tried to covertly wipe my cheek.

"How's the game?" she sat beside Carlisle and they looked happy. I wanted that.

"Boring," I shrugged. "How's the kitchen?"

"Hot," she laughed and fanned her face slightly. "I couldn't take the heat, so I left. I think everything is almost done, we just have to wait for the turkey to finish. The girls are finishing some dishes." I nodded, four times.

Emmett hollered for something and Rosalie threw a can at him. It felt like love.

Eventually they started talking about stories and I wanted to listen, but I wanted to run away, and mostly, I just wanted to feel quiet again.

"Happy Thanksgiving Edward," Alice greeted me when she finally joined us in the room. Bella was on her heels. I sort of enjoyed how crowded I felt.

"Happy Thanksgiving," I gave her a weak smile. Sometimes you remember that she's just your baby sister, and no matter how old she is, she is still a baby. "It smells really good, Alice."

I liked the smile she got, the kind that she could have eaten a banana sideways, that's how big she was grinning. She looked like Mom. She looked like someone Mom would be proud of. And that was a prayer, I think.

"It better," she huffed, and flopped on the couch a second later. "I've been up since five working on it all."

"Yeah, she was practically knocking down the door at that heinous hour," Emmett threw a pillow at her. "I swear to God Alice, if this isn't the best meal I've ever eaten, I will wake you up early every morning from now on."

"If this is good, I'll let you even plan Christmas dinner," I offered. It felt out of place, but it was the only thing I had, and for some reason, I wanted to talk to them.

"Hell with that," Alice laughed, "We're ordering in for Christmas. I'm not getting up early to prepare all this fuckery."

I smiled, big enough that I could eat a banana sideways too, because I appreciated that.

"What fuckery?" Bella asked as she came in to the end of a conversation. I choked on my banana when my smiled disappeared at the sight of her. I had the urge to scream that she was driving me crazy because I loved her so fucking much, but that seemed inappropriate, so I just took her in like poison.

"Christmas dinner," Emmett explained. "We're making Alice cook. She wants family togetherness, the only thing that assures asses in seats is the food."

"He's right, Alice," Bella shrugged and walked beside me. "I think it's Emmett's turn next holiday."

Emmett looked stunned and Alice looked victorious. I just watched Bella while they started arguing and Carlisle and Esme tried to referee. That felt like family, but in semi-wrong ways.

"You okay?" Bella crunched her eyebrows together and leaned towards me so only I could hear her.

"Better now," I sighed.

I was weak. But she was there.

And she smiled.

"Dinner's almost ready," she ran her hand through my hair, put her arm around my neck and sat on my lap. I liked it. "I made apple pie."

"Have you been holding out on me?" I pretended to be offended.

"What?" she laughed.

"I mean, I have yet to taste your pie. Have you been holding out on me? Just string him along with muffins but save the good stuff for everyone else?"

"That was the master plan, but it seems you figured me out too soon," she sounded nefarious, and I liked it. I liked it almost too much, and I searched for a tree. Of course there were none, and that was heartbreaking.

But what wasn't heartbreaking was Bella laughing with Alice and Emmett.

And dinner wasn't heartbreaking either. There was grace and pie and turkey, and I ate too much, and told Alice that her stuffing was absolutely amazing, I told Rosalie that I wanted her to make me the mashed potatoes more often, even though I really didn't like them that much, I told everyone something, and I think it was okay to lie and stretch the truth because it was Thanksgiving, and you can do that sort of thing on days like this. And mostly, I was thankful that Bella sometimes held my hand, and made good apple pie, and smiled and laughed and was a secret kind of happy that only comes when you're comfortable. And that made me comfortable. And that made me realize I wasn't that guilty, and I wouldn't wipe any more kisses off of my cheek from Esme.

And at the same time, it only made me further aware that I needed Bella. And that was worrisome.

So when the dishes were done, and everyone was in a food coma, and the windows had grown so dark we forgot that there was a city outside, and instead were too distracted with the lights inside, I asked Bella if we could go. We did what was required, and if not more. I felt okay, and even worse about giving Alice so much hell earlier.

And all of these feelings made me miss the numbers.

And the whole day, a blur of monotonous newness, made me miss the numbers.

And the hours that passed, made me miss empiricism, because each smile, joke, story and helping of yams made me remember what it's like before the other shoe drops.

And you always have to be ready for that fucker to fall.

So I left, and Bella stayed for a little longer. And I liked that, because for a second, I needed to think.

What about? I'm not sure. And that was a prayer.

Before I even started to think about a fraction of everything I thought I needed to think about, I heard the door open, and Bella's familiar footsteps look in the den, then the library, and finally the bedroom. I liked that she searched for me. I liked the way she looked in the reflection of the windows, with equations transposed on her skin.

"Mmm, I'm full and sleepy," she sighed and joined me. I liked how she curled up in my lap and kissed my cheek and yawned like a kitten.

"Me too," I agreed. There was quiet then, but the full kind; a kind I didn't like as much as this morning.

"Today was fun, huh?" she leaned her forehead against my neck, and it fit.

I nodded, and tried not to think about Bella wanting to be far away with her family, and instead here, with me. It was enough to make any man buckle.

"I'm sorry I need you," I whispered and closed my eyes as tight as I could. I felt my lungs burning, and my chest muscles felt as if they were fists, balling up and squeezing me. I wanted to cry, but boys don't cry; men don't cry, and there was nothing to cry about. And that wasn't meant to be a prayer, but I figured it should be anyway, because today felt like a holy day.

"Don't be sorry," she cooed. It made me feel even worse. I was the irrational woman who had just witnessed a murder and couldn't stop crying and was literally breaking down in the loudest, most genuine way imaginable. "I need you."

I wanted to make tiny noises of disbelief, to lift her by her shoulders and stare at her and ask if she was feeling alright, and possibly be afraid a freak fever spiked over the last forty-eight seconds, and maybe melted her brain.

"Why? I mean…I'm me," I shook my head, trying to shake free the stalactites and stalagmites of self-awareness and doubt that hung in the caverns of my mind, buried deep in the folds and gyres of my cerebellum, deeper than even Jules Verne would dare venture, so deeply ingrained that it would take a complete tectonic shift to alter them, so strong, so sure, so continuous, they were as far from extinction as hamsters.

"Because you _are_ you," she smiled and laughed, the serious, I-can't-believe-you-don't-believe-me type of laugh that is slightly annoyed, slightly why-would-you-ask-me-that-stupid-question question. "I can't make my heart not feel pulled to you. I don't need an explanation. You feel good. When you do this," she lifted my hands, who had since busied themselves rubbing holes in my knees, sat on my lap and placed my hands around her, on the outskirts of Bakersfield. "I like the things you think and say and the way you think about things."

I laughed, an if-you-only-knew-how-much-I-think-of-you-naked-you'd-run laugh, and rolled my eyes and looked away; the hardest thing I'd ever done. I wondered if she could read minds, because her hands rested on my neck, on the dip between clavicle and throat. Her eyes were big. Big enough that made puppies in pet shop windows look like rabid gila monsters who needed to be put down in shame.

"I like that every day I get to be something different, every day there's this adventure, there's this breath, there's this fullness to each moment," she was smiling, and looking at me like I looked at her, I'm sure, and that scared me.

"I made you stay, when you could have gone home," I shook my head.

Stalagmites stand mightily.

"I ask too much," I shook my head harder, but her hands were stalagmites in and of themselves.

Stalactites hang tightly.

"I won't be a burden to you." I stated it. No debate needed. My fingers felt numb, and I realized I was still rubbing them, although this time I was working on a hole in Bella's hip, and that was wrong, so I moved them to the wheels of my chair. I could give myself a flat. I wasn't going anywhere anyway.

But Bella didn't let go, or seem to notice. I wondered if I was breaking up with her. I didn't want to do that, but I didn't want to be her chain.

Her hands were too much though, and for me, felt like walking on sunshine. And then she kissed me. She kissed me in a way that I was afraid she hadn't killed me.

"There are no such things as sacrifices if you act out of love," she whispered, and her eyes were shut tight, just like mine had been, so I knew she was praying, or at least trying to. And that's a prayer. "And there is no shame in asking to loved."

I wanted to argue, to tell her that you can't chain something you love. That it is ridiculously heavy to know these facts about tectonics and aviation and salmonella.

"Love me?" she breathed. I wanted to open my eyes, to stare into her eyes and tell her that's all I was trying to do, but I didn't want to stop praying, so I just nodded.

And our record flipped, and there was a throat clearing and the static, gravely noise of silence.

**/big steps.**


	14. The Status and the Quo

**I don't own, obvi.  
/disclaimer**

**This took a while. I was stuck. Sorry. Finals are over soon, then I will update like crazy, then I won't because I'll be on vacation, getting laid, then school starts again.  
/apology and warning.**

**Thank you, Trevor. You'll never know it, but I remember what you've always told me.  
/Get Better.**

**I appreciate each and every review/recommendation/anything. You all can stay.  
/gratitude**

**I won't get a beta. I know I can't spell, and my grammar is most of the time, always a purposeful mistake, but any other time, I'll just pretend it is. Honestly, no one could handle the job. I promise. I wish I could have one, but as Tupac once said, 'that's just the way it is.'  
/please stop suggesting it**

_**The Only Living Boy in New York**_** is the greatest song of all time.  
/dare you to listen to it just once and not have hope dripping from your scalp. **

**Now onto the sex.  
/jk**

**Chapter Fourteen: The Status and The Quo**

_Oh some evil spirit,__  
__oh some evil this way comes.__  
__They told me how they fear it,__  
__now they're placing it on their tongues.  
__  
__Oh to see it with my own eyes…  
__  
__No food or water for the better part of ten months.__  
__Quietly he sat between the folds of a free trunk.  
__  
__Oh to see it with my own eyes.  
__  
__All the men of faith and men of science had their questions:__  
__Could it ever be on earth as it is in heaven? _

"Is there anything I can say to change your mind, Edward?" The older man leaned forward, so his forearms were resting on his thighs. I liked the way his hands flopped hopelessly, because I assumed they were tired after waving around in front of his face with possibilities and dreams and promises.

Everyone is always selling something, and sometimes you can't tell what, but they are. Everyone is a salesman. Everyone is Willy fucking Loman. We all have hoses behind our commodes.

I looked at him and took another sip of whiskey. It tasted like broken promises and Bella's lips. Mostly, because I promised her I wouldn't drink anymore. But I lied myself into allowing a few glasses now. Funny how things go, when you really think about it. Bella didn't like the idea of it, overall, in general. I liked that it was like blood on my hands, because it's important to remember what you can never wash away. And that was a prayer.

I pulled on my tie again until it hung in a tighter knot below my collar. Dr. Rickman had been a friend of our family since before I couldn't walk. He had been my father's dorm mate in undergrad, and also in medical school, best man at my parents wedding, Emmett's godfather, and so on and so forth. It felt daunting to have so much history sitting beside me, begging me to reconsider the job offer. It was everything I ever ran away from.

"I'm dating one of the students, Alan, I couldn't," I shook my head and traced the glass a little more. I was old enough to still be a student.

He leaned back and smiled slightly. He looked like football weekends at Yale, where my father let Emmett and I have our first beers. He looked like a man who helped my father and I work on our mechanical planes. He looked like history and a past and part of my father that I would never know, and therefore I was jealous of that. He looked like a man without a college best friend as well, and for that I was indebted to him.

"I heard about that," he smiled, much like you would imagine the next words to come barking out of his mouth to be 'you old dog you, picking up the college chicks, damn boy.' "I'm sure she's a nice girl." He would have to meet her one day, and I liked that idea because she was worth meeting.

"She is," I nodded, four times, eagerly. I drummed my fingers against my thigh anxious at the thought of Bella. She was working tonight.

"I can't condone a faculty member dating a student, but since you started dating her before my offer, I don't see how it would be breaking any rules," he was back to being a salesman, or a politician, and I couldn't decide which was worse.

"I'm not sure I will be any good at it," I set the glass on my knee again and stared into the much darker liquid. I wondered about liquids, and gravity, and how much easier life would be if I could slurp whiskey out of midair, and raindrops hung, suspended like on little strings, just sitting still until we needed them, so we could hold onto rainy days when we got sick of the sun, or just cut the strings when me missed playing outside. Or if rain fell upward, and the evaporation cycle was reversed, and raindrops could be like balloons, so we could choose to let them go, and they would float up to the sky and make clouds. But it might be inhuman to do such a thing to something like rain. I would ask Bella. She would know.

"Edward, you're one of the leading mathematicians in the country, not to mention one of the forbearers for astrophysics and medical research. What aren't you good at?" he seemed to laugh the last question.

"Baking. I'm a horrid baker," I mumbled and took a sip of my drink, emptying the glass, and putting rain drops on the back burner. "I can't spell either. I'm never on time, but I hate tardiness. I can't speak in front of crowds. I can't drive. Statistically, I'm lacking in much-needed social and life skills, which invariable should offset the higher parts of my IQ. I am _the _leading mathematician, not only of my age group, but also of North America, and I would venture to say South America. My medical research will never see maturation my lifetime. I can't do much, actually." I wanted to say that I could kiss Bella, and that I was good at that, but suddenly I wasn't quite sure, and I would also have to ask her that.

"And you're not good at being modest either," Alan laughed and patted my knee when he sat my glass on the table before motioning for the check. I wondered how heavy that was, and if I should appreciate being treated like I could differentiate.

"I'll do it," I nodded, five times, quickly. We are all Willy Loman. Who is John Galt? And so on.

"What?" Alan stared at me, the wrinkles in his forehead sifting lower in the middle for a moment. I wondered if my dad would have similar ones, or if maybe he would have more or less. I wondered if he would be a dean at a prestigious university, or if he'd have retired by now and set up a summer home in France with my mom. I think I knew the answer. But things like that don't matter when you realize at this moment he was a skeleton and nothing about him was the same. That was always the normalizer, the canceller of hope, the slap of reality; death. It's one of the most painful things in the world, and it's good, because it is necessary.

"I'll do it. I'll teach the classes," I nodded again, five times, to seal the deal. It would be a job, and one I could do, with practice. I could do it, and it would be normal. I'd have a nine to five, commute, grade papers, and get a salary. Because my dad would want me to. And that was a prayer, I was pretty sure. And he would say that it was a good thing, to teach, and he had no knack for it. But he did, because he taught me how to tell how tender meat was my poking my palm and moving my thumb to each fingertip, and he taught me that my hands were big hands.

"As much as I want to tell you that you don't have to do it," Alan handed the waiter some bills and waved him off as he replaced his money clip in his jacket pocket, "I am desperate."

"Then I'm the man for the job," I nodded, five more times, with a slight smile. If Bella had been there, she would have scolded me and held my palm because I was nervous. But she wasn't, so I pinched my wrist and tried not to look my father's best friend in the face. That only made me wonder if he was still a dead man's best friend, and how that situation still worked. Did Dr. Rickman still reference my father as his best friend, or did he simply avoid naming someone in a story. _You should have seen the look on that cheerleaders face when that one guy pulled his pants back up. That guy was something._ And I felt bad for that. Because no one wants to hear a story about a dead guy.

"Edward," he stood and grabbed my hand. I would have stood, but this didn't seem like the time or place to show off. "I could kiss you, son." He shook my hand eagerly. I felt like each one of my joints got looser with each shake, he was that excited. If gratefulness was tearing limbs off of bodies, I was glad I was never thankful.

"You're welcome," I nodded with my shaking body. I wondered if he knew I was nodding, and I wondered if he knew that I hated when he called me son, even though I'd known him since I was born.

He walked out of the smoky bar, and I rolled behind him with the gasp of smoke that escaped with the open door. I watched it float a little higher until it stretched and strung itself into the sky, while Alan told me his secretary would set up an appointment with HR, and I would have to have a meeting with the department head to set up a syllabus, and a bunch of other nonsense I gave no fucks about hearing. I wondered if everything was smoke, and I wished I could float until I was stretched into nothing, and everything. While he talked with his hands and fanned down a cab, I only grew more excited about telling Bella. I was even excited to tell Alice. I heard that playing a part long enough almost became real life, and you believed yourself to be that thing you played. Like I once heard that Daniel Radcliff is Harry Potter now. That's just how things worked. So if I was a professor, and I went to work, and I read important papers, and wrote important papers, and was distinguished enough to have a smoking jacket and a pipe and a roaring fire with mountains of books and mahogany shelves behind me, I could be normal, and normal was happy, and even if I couldn't walk, I would be a professor, and there was some pride in that.

At least more than I had now.

So I let him explain things that I would inevitably be hearing again, while all I wanted to do was roll away. I already agreed, and I didn't see the point in getting all excited. I wanted to take Bella out to dinner, because it was spontaneous, and it was the first thing that popped into my head.

I watched him get into the cab as we exchanged goodbyes with me claiming I would see when Bella was free to have dinner so he could meet her, and I realized I could have saved myself seventy-three minutes and eighteen seconds had I just agreed over the phone. I could have also saved myself the guilt of looking a dead man's best friend in the face. But then again, one wouldn't have happened without the other. Like chickens and eggs.

My diver watch could be backed over by a bus filled with sumo wrestlers carrying walruses, and still tell me the time, and that was important, not for the sheer magnitude of dropping things and throwing my watch down to where Megatron once rested, but because the time was nearly the hour Bella got off work. And even though it was cold, and my fingers felt like they had been run over by a bus filled with sumo wrestlers carrying walruses, I pushed myself towards the bookstore Bella sometimes worked at when she wasn't at the restaurant.

It was nice, to see Christmas lights, and I wondered why we couldn't leave them up all year, because that would be comforting to see when walking around late at night, when normally you need security. Or at least rolling. And not security from muggers, but security in the fact that you're walking around a completely dead city, and they haven't forgotten, that someone hasn't forgotten that you are living and breathing and sometimes have a head full of thoughts. The lights were warm, and the pure white that wasn't cheap, that wasn't the orange, red, yellow, or green that usually illuminated city sidewalks. One doesn't choose to walk around late at night while the city breathes and sighs and dreams together, but you have to do it, and it would be polite, to leave nice lights on for those who have full minds. It'd at least be one less thing to worry about. And that was a prayer.

Bella's bookstore was also done up with Christmas attire, and it made me feel like I was five years old, and walking down streets, window shopping with my mom. I liked the feel of cold glass as I pressed my face against the window searching for an even better Christmas wish. It's amazing which things you remember, the most insignificant images and touches as opposed to those giant, life-changing concepts that should be ingrained.

"You look impossibly cute," Bella's voice was soft, and sounded like blinking Christmas lights and handmade felt poinsettias. I liked the weight of her hand as she tugged my ear and her fingers traced against the nape of my neck. I liked the cool glass and how it fogged and spread, almost the opposite of the smoke.

"Impossibly cute," I repeated and turned to find her, smiling, and with her head cocked to the side. "Seems about right. You need gloves, or your fingers will freeze off." I knew that was a prayer, because it was the same thing my mother told me. But I almost didn't want her to get them, because the shivers from their chill made me feel like enjoying Christmas.

"I had a pair, but I lost them," she laughed. It felt like six months of laughs I'd grown used to hearing. "I didn't expect to see your handsome face waiting for me. I assumed your meeting with Dr. Rickman ran later than you expected?" I liked that she thought about be enough to assume.

So I pulled her down into my lap and kissed her. Because there were lights that made the world feel like a nightlight, and I liked feeling like there was cool glass pressed against my body. Bella's lips felt like stripping out of frozen clothes and sitting in a warm room with much too pink skin so your whole body inversely felt like it was on fire. There was nothing in the world like freezing until you burned.

"And you drank whiskey. Hmm, Walker, Blue Label?" Bella kissed me again, softly on the lips, then nodded to herself. I nodded. "He was really trying to persuade you, wasn't he?"

"I cannot be moved with good whiskey alone," I scoffed and adjusted her on my lap. I liked the way our coats made us a bundled, warm, Coca-Cola commercial. Bella shoved her face in my lapel when I pulled her tight against my chest, searching for the glass of the snow globe that I felt trapped inside, and I got tangled in her hair, which was frozen and pricked at my nose.

"You're right, which is why he offered Tabacalera, the Diamond Crown, no, that's not it," Bella tapped her finger against her chin. Her skin was pale, but glowing where blood rushed to make sure she didn't turn into an ice cube. She pressed her nose against my nose, and looked into my eyes with a fiercely determined, soul-searching look. "Gurkha."

"Stradivarius," I whispered.

"Gah," Bella moaned and threw her head back. That did nothing to make me not want to kiss every inch of her. I wondered if it was normal to think about kissing another human being as much as I thought about kissing Bella. Nearly twenty seven percent of my day was spent kissing or thinking about kissing her. It didn't seem like enough. I felt like something. And I happened. And that was good. "I can never keep those damn cigars straight."

"You're just throwing out names, aren't you?" I laughed and Bella pulled away and onto her own feet. I remembered I had forgotten what that felt like.

"Yes," Bella nodded and tucked hair behind her ear. "Are you going to tell me how the meeting went, or do I have to guess more things tonight?"

"You're now, officially, not sleeping with a professor," I smiled very big as we started to move away from the bookstore. Bella laughed a laugh that would have made it alright if there hadn't been Christmas lights on the streets and trees, and would have made me smile even bigger had it been shadowed by orange streetlamps.

"Edward, that's not specific enough of an answer," she rolled her eyes. "That either means you've decided I wasn't allowed to sleep over, or you're a professor I refuse to have sex with." I wondered if that was a prayer, because I very much wanted to kiss every inch of Bella.

I would sit on a man in a fake red suit and with a fake beard, and tell him that I wanted to slip my hand under Bella's skirt and see her naked, and probably do a lot more things if she wanted to as well, and that I would never ask for anything for Christmas ever again. But I also wanted to sit on the couch and drink hot cocoa and watch _How to Train Your Dragon_ while it snowed outside and the house smelled like pine needles and cinnamon, even if I didn't get to feel her up. And that was a prayer, and that was a good one.

"I took the job," I sighed. Thinking about Christmas wishes made me feel sick, like I wanted to holly jolly hurl.

"So I'm hot for teacher?" Bella nudged my shoulder.

"Not unless you're taking advanced calculus," I shrugged.

"No, I don't think I need that one," she laughed. I didn't suggest taking her to dinner, because suddenly Christmas felt real, and nothing is worse than anything that is real.

I let Bella ask me questions and I talked to her about Dr. Rickman, and how once he and my father tried to guild a catapult to throw pumpkins but instead ended up breaking part of our garage.

And I mostly liked that Bella had her hands tucked into the corner of my elbow, because I was keeping her warm, and I could be a space heater, if I failed at everything else.

I tried to think about raindrops again, and if it would work the same for snowflakes, or if they would expire and melt away before we could release them. It seemed important.

"Wait, what?" I paused at Bella's front door as she stood on the little step that led up to her door.

"You. Me. Inside. There is tea, and possibly cookies, though I'm not sure if I have many left. I might even have a movie you would tolerate sitting through," Bella gave me a confused look. I'm sure I mimicked it right back at her.

"But, I can't go upstairs," I felt my knitted brow, and I wanted nothing more than to unwind it; to catch a loose strand of my sweater and walk until I was naked.

"Whao, calm down, babycakes," Bella had a slow smile that I enjoyed watching spread across her face. "I never thought about inviting you upstairs. Well, I mean," she turned her head aside and was lost away from me for a moment, "I thought about it, but that's not the point really. I just mean you could come in, because you said you never were invited in, and I thought it'd be polite."

"Are you going to open the door, or are we going to wait until your fingers are too numb to wiggle the lock?" I stopped her rambling. I liked when she did that sometimes, went far away from the true conversation and debated things with herself.

"Right," Bella nodded, three times and smiled. I watched her open the door and was blasted with warmth.

I pushed myself up the step, then once more, trying not too fall backwards, or worse yet look weaker in front of Bella.

I remembered picking her up for our first date, and for some reason felt the same set of nerves. You can feel all kinds of things if you let yourself. It's a dreadful practice.

Her apartment was small, or at least the downstairs was. Her living room was sparse. A couch, a bookshelf, a tv stand with a smaller television in it. I saw a light, which I assumed came from the kitchen. It smelled like Bella, which smelled like vanilla. I pulled on my tie again, and it just pulled my neck lower, so I pulled it to the side, and tried to find a pulse. There was something good here, but my mind was already on overdrive.

It's amazing how much things can change in twenty minutes.

"You can just throw your coat on the chair," Bella said. It was just her voice, as she had since disappeared into the kitchen.

I found a chair and wiggled my arms free of my suddenly stifling coat. I wanted to go through and touch everything, every corner, doorknob, inch of wall, seam of cushion, joint of furniture; I wanted to read it all. That felt alarming indecent, so I elected to go into the kitchen. I had assumed Bella and I had declared kitchens as neutral territory, what for all the dancing and pillaging she did in mine. Basically, our thirty-seventh parallel. And we straddled it.

"Let me know your plans," a voice buzzed and garbled over her answering machine. For a second it struck me as weird moreso that she had an answering machine and a land line, yet refused to get a cell phone, then the fact that a male voice was asking for her plans. "I love you, kid."

I pretended I was a lamp.

Unfortunately, lamps don't belong in kitchens, and neither did I.

Bella leaned against a chair with her arms over her chest staring at the machine as if it was holding another message from her. I watched her shoulders go taller, then exhale. I liked when she breathed.

"My father," she sighed and turned to me with a lamp of a smile. "I told him I'd be home for Christmas this year."

"He sounds like he's stuck in the eighties," I nodded, three times and stared at my knee. "But that could be because you still use an answering machine."

Bella laughed and shook her head. I was glad she didn't have a cell phone. There are only so many texts I could send before '_Tits or GTFO_' came out. And that was a prayer, awkwardly enough.

"I think I have to go home for Christmas," she yawned and placed her coat on the chair she was just using for support. "I promised, and it's been a long time." I nodded, four more times.

"Right." I yawned as she did. It was nice to pretend that this news didn't feel like being blindsided, but that joke was in bad taste, so I knew I shouldn't say it to her. So we were quiet for twenty-nine breaths.

"Would you like to stay the night?" Bella looked at me and batted her lashes. But she didn't actually bat them. Her face screamed, and screaming faces don't bat. It had the same effect, or maybe a completely different one, but at the same time my answer would be the same no matter what her face looked like.

"I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather stay tonight," I nodded, four times. And that was the truth, and it was the truth every night I was away from Bella. I'd want to be where she was. But that was sappy, and something I would imagine Richard Gere saying.

"You say that now," Bella smiled and slumped her shoulders as her mind went for a walk through the Christmas lights that lit the streets, "but just wait until you feel how uncomfortable my sleeper sofa is."

Assuming is only fun when you assume correctly, or in your favor.


	15. The Fight and the Flight

**You were one of the most beautiful souls. I am both greater for knowing you, and lesser for having lost. One day, I swear, I will have a more fitting dedication, because you said that I could, even when I didn't. For now, I'll keep it locked in my lungs for you.  
/holdfast.**

**This is awfully short, because it won't do what I want it to do, and it won't be what I want it to be, and I'm too damn lazy to start over because I really liked one of the lines.  
/oh well. **

**Chapter Fifteen: The Fight and the Flight**

_I was so scared of everything you put in front of me__  
__I've been marching to every part of me__  
__Just to see__  
__why you need me to be__  
__the boy you need me to be.___

_Amazing grace__  
__How sweet the sound__  
__That saves a wretch like me__  
__I once was lost__  
__And now I'm found__  
__Was blind but now I see___

_I'm the type of person who lets fear drive;__  
__I'm the type of guy that lets it drive.__  
__Cause I'm addicted, I'm needy__  
__I'm lost without you__  
__I need you__._

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Emmett turned as best he could to face me in the confines of the car. I felt the seat sway and pull as his arm rested against my own, as he anchored himself there. It looked like Dad. I was almost okay with it. Seven breathes. Seven days. Six years.

"I think so," I nodded, three times, and went back to staring out the windshield without moving.

"Not exactly the confidence you were brimming with three states ago," he chuckled. I just swallowed in response and looked towards the house. "Right," Emmet moved and the car became bright, and the darkness outside made walls around the car. I'm sure there was some symbolism there, but at the same time, as Mark Twain once said, 'I gave no fucks.'

I squinted through the window, seeing only blackness and the porchlight, which projected like a tiny sun, until it wasn't strong enough, and became absent. The front door looked like a front door of a house you would expect people who drove tractors to live. My mind chanted and screamed so quickly that I couldn't understand it.

"Do you want me to go with you?" Emmett appeared as he opened my door. I felt like I was seven and going to the dentist and I knew that I had been eating much too much candy. He looked like Wally, and I felt like the Beave. One Christmas he convinced me Santa was going to take me away because I was bad, and then his elves were going to beat me raw and I would be forced to knit sweaters for dolls forever. Those are things you remember less than gravestones.

I just shook my head, and he nodded, twice. He should have a nice Christmas with his wife, and with her family. And he should give her the car he bought for her and she should hug him so tight he can't breathe. And one day, they'll forget to remember their first Christmas together.

I felt my sternum bowing under the weight of the saint around my neck and the chill in the air. I was sure my chest touched my spine as I pushed myself up the concrete walk bisecting two patches of darkness that just extended into more darkness. It's funny, if you really think about things. If you truly look at where you are at this exact moment and ask yourself why you are here, how you got there, who you have become and how you were ever allowed. If you really think about things, deeply, aggressively, violently thought about things, I think we'd all be miserable.

I paused at the stairs, at the edge of the universe created by the tiny flickering porchlight, and wondered what God felt like, to be so big, and so little, and so much, and not enough all at one time, to have everyone, and no one, to feel every papercut and weigh every heart, to measure each sound and breath and every inch of guilt; it must be maddening. And I understood why things went to hell every now and then.

I cleared my throat to thunder across the fake sky, but it was more of a whimper. Five breathes.

Bella left three days ago. I wondered if this was my boombox over my head, I'm in it, please don't turn me away moment. That made me nervous. But she was in pain, and not happy, and I just wanted her to be happy.

It felt foreign, to be concerned about someone else's happiness, so suddenly, you don't even realize you are concerned in the first place. But I wanted her to be happy. In fact, the only thing in the world I really needed was for her to be happy. It's just kind of funny how things like that work out. And that was a prayer.

I threw a rock at the door. I felt like I was five and trying to skip across a pond.

I threw another. And another. I kept throwing them, and remembering what it was like to sip scotch and watch Bella's legs when she was a stranger and didn't hold my hand and kiss me.

It's exceptionally difficult to live.

I threw another. And looked at the sky. There were more stars fighting to be seen and inevitably being sent away by bigger and brighter ones, than I had ever seen in my whole life. This was where all the stars ran to when big cities decided it was nighttime.

Six years today.

Sometimes, I think we forget purposefully, or else our calendars become a lot of dates we avoid, and anniversaries of what was, and you can't start tomorrow like that. That doesn't matter though. You still remember, simply until you don't one day. Then three weeks later you fondly look at the dates that have passed and remember how much it hurts to be the one left.

It's a process.

"Edward?" Bella's voice sounded like Christmas, when you're ten years old and there's a bike propped up on a kickstand in front of the tree. That combination of complete hope and fulfillment versus disbelief and almost sadness when you realize you might never be this happy again. Fleeting time and such. "What are you…? How in the…?"

I wanted to look back at Emmett in the car, but that would mean looking away from Bella, and that would be a bad decision because I was pretty sure this was a dream, and you don't look away from a dream. I also wanted to say something devilishly clever, or give her a look that smoldered like James Dean and Marlon Brando's love child. But both of them were dead too. So I just ran my hands along my jeans, six times, and tried to not look like Chris Hanson had walked out behind her. I wanted to ask her if I was smoldering, but I felt saturated.

Before I could give her any sort of looks, reminiscent of dead sex symbols or not, the screen door was thrown open, smashed against the white-washed wood paneling, and again clapped vibrantly with the door jamb, shadowing the universe, then setting it back the same. And then Bella was in my lap, and I was glad I wasn't on a hill, or I would have rolled backwards. There wasn't even enough time to put my brakes on. And that was a prayer.

I liked that she hugged me; just hugged. Of course it was a very strong hug. Stronger than I've ever felt a hug to be, and potentially strangulation and assault. Sometimes I think we forget that being clung to like life vest, consumed even, feels just as good as lips and lips. So I hugged her back, even though I was nervous, shaking, and my arms felt like they weighed forty pounds each. I remembered how her body felt against mine, and closed my eyes, because even though I was holding her, and feeling her breath, and being tangled, I felt the most unreal I had ever felt. I wasn't sure if I liked it.

All that happiness means is that you have the capacity to become unhappy. I wasn't sure what unhappiness was, but if you can define something by what it wasn't, then being unhappy was not being right here in Bella's little arms in the middle of a much too starry sky on the edge of the world. So I was glad I was happy. And it didn't even feel like a sin, to be happy today.

"You," Bella sighed. Her breath was warm and damp, like I imagine the Amazon felt like at that very moment, because winter here is summer there. I wondered if I was hugging her too tightly and decided I should let her go. But I didn't act on that. I liked being reminded I was realer than real.

"Hi," I smiled and let my chin sag to her shoulder. She didn't see the smile, but I don't think that really mattered. I promised myself I would smile more around her, so she knew that I was in love with her.

"What are you doing here?" Bella pulled back until her eyes were all I could see, and her nose was touching my nose.

"I don't know. I forgot I was real." I shrugged. I had fourteen hours to think of a suitable answer. That was enough time to read _Moby Dick_, twice. "Is that the right answer?"

"Me too," Bella nodded and pulled away further before running her fingers over my forehead, until I realized I was thinking too hard, and my brows parted like she was in regular communication with the burning bush. And she ran them down the ridge of my nose, and extended her fingers until I felt them on my cheeks as well, until they were gone, and she watched just one move down my lips and finally off of my chin like leaning off of a ledge until all that's there for an instant are your toes, and then you never existed. "I love you."

"I know," I nodded. I liked how her eyes stayed fixed on my lips, then moved to my eyes when she said it, and the fact that she didn't blink. I liked even more that she kissed me, and her hands held onto my shoulders and neck and hair like I was a ghost and this was all we would ever have.

"It was silly to think it would be okay to be apart on Christmas," she smiled the saddest smile. "But I didn't invite you for many different reasons, despite it all." I watched her shoulders ease into my hands, where I tried to cup her scapula like a man trying to keep a snowman from melting, and the carrot nose keeps ending up as a belly button until you pat the snow together despite the soaring temperatures, and put the potential phallus back on its face.

"I can go," I nodded, three times. I wanted to run my hands along my thighs and scratch my jeans until denim manifested under my nails to such a degree my nails would be permanently blue. You'd be amazed at how persuasive denial can be.

"Stay," she whispered. Her eyes looked like Bambi, and felt like Bambi's mother. I felt her fingers anxiously toying with my neck and shirt collar. "But if you stay," she started warily, "You can't leave."

"That's normally the definition of 'to stay'," I cocked my head and tried to read between the betweenest lines.

"No," Bella shook her head and straightened her own spine. Her fingers stopped moving and intertwined themselves. "If you stay now, things change."

"How?" I whispered. It felt like our words had to be a secret, like I was trading everything, like Bella was almost being silly for silliness' sake.

"They just do," she shrugged. "And they can't go back, so if you stay, you stay." I wanted to kiss away the silliness, or kiss her until I had some of her silliness in me, infecting me, but the set of her jaw and the fact that her forearms were beginning to almost strangle me made me just nod. "Even when it's hard. Don't answer until you think about it."

I snapped my mouth shut, as I was already going to agree with her. And I thought about how Bella's hands felt when she sat on the couch and let my head rest in her lap while we watched stupid movies. And I thought about how much I liked the way she looked in my shirt. And I thought about how good her muffins tasted. And I dreamt about how good her cupcakes and brownies tasted, innuendo intended. Choices aren't that hard.

"Even when it's hard," I repeated. She smiled one of those sad smiles again and searched my rods and cones for every inch of truth I possessed.

"You drove fourteen hours, on Christmas Eve, to see me?"

"Emmett drove fourteen hours on Christmas Eve so I could see you," I corrected. "But it was my idea."

"You drove fourteen hours, on Christmas Eve, to see me," Bella repeated and slithered her arms, now broken at the hands from the grip her nerves forced, and grabbed my jacket zipper before laying her head on my chest. I put my chin over her head and hugged her tighter than before. And that was a prayer. In the dark, a lot of things look like prayers.

"Are you mad?" I asked when everything was quiet. I think I was mad. I think I was very mad, and very happy, and very very sad, and very much the most Edward I had ever been, and that made me very very afraid. But also very very happy.

Bella just shook her head and kept breathing. Seven breaths.

"Surprised," she laughed into my chest. "I really missed you."

"Me too," I nodded, four times. "I missed you."

"You should invite me inside so Emmett can go get Rose and they can have a Christmas together," I finally sighed.

"Edward Cullen, would you like to come inside?" She smiled the smile she usually smiles when I am being silly. I liked it because it felt normal, and like it wasn't that hard to be God, and to feel all of the feelings, and hold all of the anger, and be at fault for every sneeze and dead husband, even when you're on the edge of the universe.

I nodded three times and kissed her nose.


	16. The Afraid and the Fearing

**I don't own, obvi.  
/disclaimer**

**/you**

**Chapter 16: The Afraid and the Fearing**

_The black clouds I'm hanging  
This anchor I'm dragging  
The sails of memory rip open in silence  
We cut through the lowlands  
All hands through the salt lands  
The white caps of memory  
Confusing and violent._

_I had a dream last night  
And when I opened my eyes  
Your shoulder blade, your spine  
Were shorelines in the moon light  
New worlds for the weary  
New lands for the living  
I could make it if I tried  
I closed my eyes I kept on swimming_

_Rough seas, they carry me wherever I go._

I listened to the crunch of Emmett's tires backing down the long driveway, and I suddenly wanted to be with him. I was five and didn't want to stay at this birthday sleepover because I was positive the kids wouldn't like me. That was ridiculous though. I wasn't five, and Bella liked me.

Instead of speeding away behind Emmett, crying and exclaiming that I might wet the bed, I looked around the house I just entered. The only light was the shadow of the porchlight through the screen door and a streak of brightness from a room down the hall past the stairs I currently stared at worriedly.

I started to count the corners of the doors and floor and walls. There were two pairs of muddy boots on the ground near the door. I thought about every horror movie ever created. No one could hear me scream. This house was small. Smaller than any of my houses. I think it was smaller than any of my guesthouses. It felt nice though. It felt like Carlisle and Esme's house, where there were lives and families. You can feel that sort of thing. You can feel souls in houses, I think. I felt more at home in this foyer in some Podunk town than my own apartment. Probably because people lived and loved and died here. You can feel that sort of thing.

I heard the door close and the night disappeared with the porchlight.

"I can't believe you're here," Bella whispered and wrapped her arms around my neck. I could feel her ear on my ear, and I could hear what she could hear. She kissed my shoulder through my shirt, under my coat collar. I felt her breathe. I took a breath.

"Good or bad?" I asked, a smile slowly forming.

"Horrible," she sighed. "You really know how to make a girl fall for you, you know?"

I scoffed.

I opened my mouth to protest, but she kissed my cheek in that dismissive way, and I shut it quickly. There's almost no point in arguing with someone who is always right. I wondered if my father would be proud, to know that I could make someone fall for me. I wondered if it was good that she had fallen for me. I wondered what that meant.

"Come on, I'll give you the grand tour," Bella pulled away, lettering her arms drag along my body until the last possible second. And then I wasn't so confident anymore, and the world rushed towards me. I hadn't even realized it had disappeared, that there was anything outside of the six by eight foyer. But now I remembered. Horrible thing, memory is.

Six breathes.

Bella moved in front of me, and I couldn't help but see her, finally. I stared at her so hard, I felt like I couldn't see her anymore. And that scared me, so I pulled her hand and kissed her, because you don't need eyes to kiss.

It started slow, like blinking, like waking up in the morning, and your eyes struggle to adjust, to lift, to open. She didn't move her hands to my neck, or her pull me, and I didn't pull her anymore than just within kissing distance. But her hand stayed in my hand, and eventually her body moved closer to my body. And when she pulled away, I finally could see her, because I could remember her.

I understood nothing.

Bella straightened and suppressed a smile. It was fun to watch, her lips struggling to be emotionless. The corners twitched towards happiness. She cleared her throat and smiled at me.

"This is the office," she motioned to a door to my left. When she opened it, it creaked. "My grandfather was the only veterinarian for miles. Used to be full of his old files. I don't think anyone really uses it anymore." She clicked the light switch and the room filled with dust. I'm sure the dust was already there, but I could feel it now. I liked it. Bookshelves were filled with books, files stacked on top of them, in corners. A giant desk sat in the middle. I liked it more than my desk. Trophies were behind it. Awards hung on empty spaces of wall with yellowed newspaper stories, cut with care and admired.

"This is your grandfather's house?" I asked as the light disappeared, and the room went back to being dustless. Bella closed the door and moved across, to the right side of the hall, which opened into a new room. The wood creaked under her foot in one spot, dulled by the rug thrown over it, I imagine was as old as the house itself.

"It was," she nodded. "It was also his grandfather's house. We like hand-me-downs in this family, I guess," she shrugged. I wish I had something that had been handed down. And that was a prayer.

"This is the living room," she gestured and turned on a lamp. There was another worn rug, a coffee table littered with magazines and books and notebooks and pens, a television sat lonely in the corner, a fireplace groaned with nothing in its mouth, pictures remembered on the mantle, a couch sat against the wall comfortably, two chairs on opposite sides. It was a home.

"Those lead to the bedrooms," Bella pointed up the stairs. "And a bathroom." I just nodded and followed her down the hall. "Here's the dining room," he motioned to the right again. A long table sat in the limited light from the kitchen. I wondered what it would all look like tomorrow. "And here's a bathroom," she pointed to the left, and then suddenly we were in a giant kitchen. "This door leads to the mud room," she pointed and smiled.

"What's a mud room?" I stopped and stared at the tiny room, fingering the wall for a switch. "You have a room for mud?" I was probably too excited for this slice of Americana I never knew existed, that when the light was turned on, and I saw the washer and dryer, some storage, and a tub of shoes and coats, and another door which I assumed led outside, I audibly sighed.

"We try to keep mud out of the house," Bella laughed. It was a full laugh, and it made me feel ridiculous and out of place, but at the same time, it was nice to hear. Sort of like that song on the radio you always catch the end of, until you hear the beginning of it one day, and it sounds familiar, and then it gets to the last few seconds and you realize what it is. "It's where we kick our shoes off and strip down if we're dirty. It's more convenient then dragging dirt through the house."

"Right, that makes more sense," I nod, three times.

I fingered the wood of the doorway, tracing the notches and dates cut into it. It reminded me of a house I once lived in. I was much taller then.

"Can I get you something to eat or drink?" her voice was farther away than right behind me as I thought she was. "I made spaghetti for dinner earlier. Hold that, fuck." I turned to see her ass sticking out from the refrigerator. I liked that. "Fucking fuck!" she snapped up quickly and before I could realize what was happening, she flung open the oven door and searched for an oven mitt. "Thank fucking God," she heaved away the frazzled state I wasn't used to seeing her in. And that was a prayer, because I hoped she would never be in it again.

The kitchen filled with warmth, and what I imagined were those waves and breezes of trails of smells wafting from the pies she pulled from the oven. I was wrong; this felt like home, now.

I moved towards the table in the kitchen where Bella's sketchpad and an array of pastel looking crayons sat. A bottle of beer sat surrounded by it's own rings, like Saturn, but worse.

"Okay, sorry, my handsome boyfriend showed up and distracted me from my baking," Bella leaned against the skin and let her shoulders drop whatever weight they had been carrying.

"I didn't know you smoked," I stared at the single cigarette in the ashtray, spilling its smoke into the sky, surrounded by the graveyard of other butts.

"I don't," Bella didn't move. Her eyes were on the smoke as well. "I just like the feel of it. You're going to think this is stupid," she rolled her eyes and walked across the floor to me, hitting another creaking board.

"Doubtful," I shook my head and watched her now, spilling her words into the sky. "Have you met me?" She giggled gently. I appreciated that. She took a big breath, and I appreciated that even more. I took two.

"I like the feel of it in my lips, just sitting there, for those few seconds, or even a minute before you light it. I like how easy that is. I like lighting it, the smell from the smoke, from the lighter, from the weight that is always the same on my lips, the sureness that it's going to burn and smell and taste the same," she reached down and flicked the ash developing on the stagnant end before stuffing it out. And that was a prayer. "I don't smoke. I chain light them. I let them burn out. I watch the smoke disappear. And everytime, I get to snuff it and start again. Nervous habit, I think. Or at least, only when I think. If that makes sense."

We stared at the ashtray. It was filled with butts. I wondered how long she had been thinking and what in the world could make her think so much. I liked it. This was Bella's thing. I felt normal.

"I get it," I nodded, twice. She stared at the ashtray. I stared at her. The things you never know about someone. They're there, in broad daylight, waiting to be seen, waiting to be glossed over as nothing special. They're there, and they're terrifying.

"Okay, I'm being a horrible host," Bella shook her head, and like that, the sadness was back on the shelf, and I didn't ask about it, because someone has to let you check that book out of the restricted section, you don't just casually see it sitting in the new release display and grab it on a whim. "I still can't believe you're here," she hummed and started to straighten up the table. There was still some smoke near the roof, giving the room a haze. I liked it.

"I can't believe I'm here either," I nodded in agreement. "Is it okay?"

Bella stared at me as she emptied the ashes of the toxins she only off-handedly took in into the trashcan. I tried to make myself look appealing. I gave her a weak smile.

"There isn't a single thing more okay in the world," she smiled. It was tiny. Those were her smiles, little ones, tiny ones with lots of happiness, or at least as much as she'd let herself have. "Now, please let me fix you some food or something. You drove across three states, the least I could do is heat up some leftovers."

I wasn't hungry, but I nodded and let her make me a plate. She handed me a beer to match hers on the table.

"I'm happy that you're here," she said, almost to herself, to her chest, as she ducked her head and laughed a little more. "I mean, I'm actually, really, really happy you are."

"Me too," I smiled. "This is usually the worst night of the year for me," I whispered, picking at the paper on the bottle. "And I was really nervous you'd send me away, or something. But now, I feel good. Like it actually is a holiday." I wanted to scrape my fingernails down my tongue to get rid of the taste in my mouth that came with saying those words. It felt all wrong.

"How long are you staying?" Bella placed a plate in front of me and sat, foot balanced on the edge of the chair, chin balanced on her knee, hugging her leg to her body. I liked when she sat like that. It reminded me of the church.

"Until you tell me to leave, remember?" I started to eat and upon first bite discovered that I was starving and Bella was an amazing cook. More than I remembered.

"Right," she nodded, and took a swig between her smile. "I mean which day are you driving back?"

"Oh, right," I nodded with her while eating at an alarming rate. "I'm not sure. I haven't planned that far ahead. I'm still on step one."

Bella got up and started to heat me another plate. I wondered if this was domestic bliss or if we were just playing house. Whatever it was, I liked it, and I wanted to always feel like I was living in a dream. I felt unreal, and I once thought that was a horrible thing, to be unreal, to not exist, but it wasn't. It was fucking wonderful.

I grabbed Bella's sketchbook while she was at the sink. There were pencil sketches of the smoke and scene of her kitchen. Farther back, there were sketches of hands. I found a nose on another page. There were trees and forests. There were designs. There were things I can't even describe. And then there was me. Which was pretty much the same. There was my hair and my eyes. My face. It was like a photograph, but better.

"I thought we agreed that it put too much pressure on a relationship to even think about looking at my work," Bella scolded as she sat a plate beside the book I continued to look through.

"You look at my work," I mumbled and kept flipping.

"I think it's very different," she laughed.

"Not to me," I looked at her. I liked how her eyes looked against the haze that was lifting from the smoke. She didn't move, so I turned back to the book. "Do my eyes look like that, really?" I held up the book and pointed. I looked miserable.

"They did," she nodded. "At one time, on one day. Or at least that's how I remember them." I didn't like that answer.

"Do I really look like that?" I sighed and looked that one, of me, staring out the window I think, but there was no buildings, just blank page, my head on my fist, brow together.

"Like you're battling the whole entire world?" Bella whispered and leaned forward from her seat before putting her little hand over my big hand and shutting the book. "Yeah, you do sometimes."

I let her have the book as I pretended to be hungry and eat more. I think I was hungry, but I didn't have it in me to eat. Worse than that, I didn't have it in me to not.

"I don't want to make you miserable," I croaked, cottonmouth suddenly taking over my throat.

"But most of the time, you look like this," she flipped through a few pages, folded the book back, and handed it to me as I took a few gulps of beer, effectively emptying my bottle.

I smiled. On the page, I was smiling, I looked happy. There was a hand on my cheek, like it was a picture.

"I love you," she pulled her knee back and kissed it while staring at the page. "I love that you are a superhero, and that you drove fourteen hours to spend Christmas with me, and that you have an unlimited capacity to just look at me and make me feel like I'm alive. I love that you are unlike any man that has ever existed. I love you, I can't help it."

It was my turn to try not to smile too big. I took another bite before offering her my fork. She took it and gingerly took some noodles. We sat like that for a few minutes, until we both were full of delicious left overs.

"I love you," I played with the empty bottle, tracing the rings with it. "I love you so much, that I don't want you to see me like that." I swallowed hard, wishing with everything in me that the bottle would fill up again and again and again, or that I could fit inside of it. Bella laughed. I contemplated trying to squeeze into it.

"That's the best part, I think," she put her hand behind my neck, so I had to look at her, "You get to love the worst parts of someone else, when you love them. You don't get to pick and choose. And you don't have any bad parts, just Edward parts." She kissed my forehead and cleaned the table, washing the dishes in the sink. I threw the bottles in the trash.

"Your sketches are amazing," I pulled up behind her. "And I'm not just saying that to get in your pants." I was. I totally was saying it to get in her pants, but that didn't make it any less true. They were amazing. Getting in her pants would just be a plus.

"You're just biased because I feed and kiss you," she stuck her tongue out and crawled into my lap. I liked that. I liked that her hands were still soapy and wet, but she grabbed my cheeks and kissed me. I liked that she kissed me. I liked that she laughed. I liked that the world retreated, and all there was, was a universe in this kitchen, and I didn't care if God was there.

"I never knew I was your model," I put my arms around her waist.

"I didn't either," she sighed. "I just put pen to paper and there you were."

Five breathes. I hadn't counted anything since I walked into the house, and I counted her breathes against my cheek, when her forehead rested on my own. I wish we could have slept like that, sitting there in the kitchen, brains melting together.

"Do I get to learn all the dirty secrets of Bella Swan on this visit?" I asked, smiling as I remembered I was in her kitchen, where she had grown up, and where she had once lived. It's a ridiculous thing to think about, if you really think about it.

Bella smiled and shook her head, so her nose rubbed against mine. I liked that. It made me smile. And that's a good thing, and a prayer.

"Bella?" The front door slammed shut. "Are you still up?" The voice grew louder, and it was accompanied by stomping boots. Bella sucked up all of the air with a quick intake.

"Yeah, kitchen," she hollered and stood. I didn't like how the world kept doing that, rushing and fleeing, rushing and feeling, rushing and falling. "I guess you do," she whispered.

"What in the world?" I turned to find the voice. A tall, slender man stood in the doorway, a case of beer in his hand, muddy boots dripping on the tile floor. He didn't look like my father, and he didn't stand like Carlisle.

"Dad, this is Edward," Bella stood beside me. I tried to look at her, but my eyes were glued to the homicidal maniac-looking man she called her father. How else is there to describe a man with a heavy coat, two-day beard, finger streaked jeans, and muddy, untied boots? I wondered if my mother's father looked like this. "Edward, this is my father, Charlie Swan." He stared at me like a homicidal maniac. I figured that was how all fathers stared at people possessing penises who were trying to penetrate their daughters.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Swan," I smiled and stuck my hand out. That was a prayer.

"Reverend," he nodded and shook mine. "Likewise, Edward. I've heard a lot about you over the past few days." Bella's hand rooted in my coat in the back of my arm.

"Me too," I nodded. "I mean, I've heard a lot about you before. Back when we were in Chicago. Not having sex." Fuck.

Reverend Swan cracked a smile, then a beer.

"Right," Bella nodded. I'm sure she wanted to kill me. Push me right down the hall, out the door, into the night, off of the edge of the universe. "Edward surprised me for Christmas, Dad. I'm going to set up the den for him, alright?"

"Sounds good. I think there are extra sheets in the upstairs closet," he took a seat at the table. All too soon Bella walked down the hall after kissing my cheek. I wondered who she did that for, and why she didn't kiss me everytime she moved to another room.

"So, Edward, that was a nice thing to do, coming here for Christmas," Reverend Swan called. I turned back to the table. I saw Bella's sketchbook, and I didn't want him too look at it. But I was paralyzed.

"It was the only choice I had," I gave a weak smile and hope he took it as a joke, instead of the absolute truth that it was. "I'm sorry for intruding without warning."

"_Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by doing some have entertained angels_," he cited and took a drink.

"Right," I nodded, seven times.

"Are you a God-fearing man, Edward," Charlie leaned back in the chair, crossed his legs and searched my soul.

I wanted to ask if he could define "God" or better yet, "fearing," but my mouth wouldn't work, not even to swallow. I ran my hands along my thighs. I started to describe the common symptoms of every known disease. I stared at Bella's sketchbook until it disappeared and I couldn't see it anymore, just like when I saw her earlier.

"I've never been more terrified."


	17. The Fathers and the Daughters

The Fathers and the Daughters.

**I don't own, obvi.  
/disclaimer.**

_Young and full of running,  
tell me where is that taking me.  
Just a great figure eight  
or a tiny infinity?_

_Love is really nothing  
but a dream that keeps waking me.  
For all of my trying  
we still end up dying;  
how can it be?_

_Don't say a word; just come over and lie here with me  
'cause I'm just about to set fire to everything I see.  
I want you so bad I'll go back on the things I believe.  
There, I just said it; I'm scared you'll forget about me._

_So young and full of running  
all the way to the edge of desire.  
Steady my breathing, silently screaming  
I have to have you now._

_Wired and I'm tired;  
think I'll sleep in my clothes on the floor.  
Or maybe this mattress will spin on its axis  
and find me on yours._

_Don't say a word; just come over and lie here with me  
'cause I'm just about to set fire to everything I see._

"Don't, Dad," Bella sighed and gave him a sad look. Charlie smiled and cracked the final beer from the pack. There was too much in that. I can't remember the last time I had seen someone drunk.

I stared at my coffee and brought the cup up to my lips without drinking any more. My hands needed something to do, my eyes needed somewhere else to be, my mouth needed to be distracted. I set it down and wiped my hands on my pants again. They were sweating like I was trying to hold the Indian Ocean in them.

"So Edward," he started, sounding like a car on a back road, barreling along much too fast, much too late at night, "tell me how you both met. Bella has been too tight lipped about her life up in Chicago." There had already been so much small talk I wanted to bash my head through the table. I could barely talk to Bella, and now I was expected to talk to her father? I could barely think straight. I found the first major flaw in my plan to surprise her.

"Rosalie married my brother," I whispered, sounding like a doe, trying to cross the street and being blinded by much too bright headlights.

"Right," he nodded, three times. I looked to Bella, but she was busy filling up a trash bag with empty liquor bottles and beer cans. I knew things weren't right. Everything made sense. Nothing made sense. I saw one part of Bella, and I realized how many parts I had never seen, would never see, could never understand, and it made me sad.

"Be careful," Charlie started again, leaning back slightly in his chair, lopsided. Everything about him seemed lopsided. "I met Bella's mother at a wedding."

"I think I read somewhere that it is good luck, to meet at a wedding," I mumbled. "And it wasn't really at the wedding, so much," I rambled, "but before the wedding. So it was like she was my unofficial date to the wedding, and that has to count for something, right?" I wanted to stop, but I couldn't. I had fears bubbling in my stomach like hunger pains, and I just wanted some water. I heard a thud in the mudroom, and that made me snap my mouth shut.

Bella appeared a moment later.

"I think it's about time for bed," she yawned. I watched her fake it and hunch her shoulders as she collapsed into herself. I was farther from sleep than when I woke up this morning, but I would do anything to get away from the reverend. Her eyes looked like the office, when the lights were turned on; vacant, dust-covered, dead to the world and serving no purpose anymore. And I didn't like that.

"I don't think it counts for shit," Charlie leaned forward like he was telling me a secret no one else should ever hear. It terrified me.

"Charlie," Bella warned.

I wondered if I would have to warn my mother to be nice to Bella, or if she would love her. I think she would have hugged her so tightly Bella would have been weary of hugs for ages and thanked her for putting up with me. I think she would have given me a wink and nod after talking to Bella for two minutes and falling as in love with her as I was. I think they would have been happy.

"It doesn't count for shit, because she's a Swan," Charlie laughed, not heeding Bella's plea. "Looks just like her mother," he sighed, sitting back and staring straight at Bella. I wanted to look back in my coffee. I wanted to jump into it and drown. I heard him gulp a few more sips. I wanted to punch him in the face, but I figured it was blasphemous.

"I think it's time for bed," Bella repeated. I heard spark and humidity in her voice, like a heat lightning storm arriving. You can see it, you can feel it, and it is foreboding as fuck.

"Sounds like her, too," Charlie laughed. It was garbled.

The kitchen was quiet. I wanted too look at Bella, but it seemed like the worst decision, and that just left me more confused.

"They leave, Edward," Charlie heaved. He stood a second later. "They make you fall in love with them, they promise you forever, and then they leave you to keep living." He kissed Bella's forehead and walked towards the stairs. "They leave," he repeated, just turning his head to me. "And all of your life, you have to regret and remember."

The kitchen was silent except for the thoughts that crashed to the floor in my brain instead of fluttering about. And that was a prayer. I heard Bella's muscles grinding, her thoughts picking up from the coves and searching for sky. A second later, boots met stairs, and disappeared after much too many _plops, stomps, plops, stomps_.

Bella sat down where her father had just left. I watched her stretch across the table and pick up a pack of cigarettes. I contemplated the waste of the mudroom.

"I would understand," she sighed, tapping it against her wrist for a second. Three breathes. "It's too much for me, even." I knew what she meant. I didn't understand how she could mean it though.

I watched her take one out, slip it in her lips, and reach again for the box of matches. I wanted to whip a lighter out of my pocket and light it for her, like James Dean. But that seemed inappropriate. She struggled to light the match, swiping it six times before a spark. Her hands were shaking. Her shoulders were shaking. I wanted to know how long this was happening.

I watched her light, inhale, blow. I watched her set it down in the ashtray, starting a new graveyard. I watched a lot of things, but I had nothing to say. I watched Bella's eyes follow bits of smoke dance to the sky. I watched every thought bounce around in her head, until her eyes were on fire and dying at the same time. I thought about how we were once a universe in my kitchen and we were obscenely happy. You don't think about moments like that at moments like this.

"How long has it been like this?" I whispered. I felt like anything louder would wake the sleeping reverend or God, and I wasn't sure which was worse. Bella turned from the table and met my eyes. I wanted to look away, because it was too much, but that's just it; it was too much, and I couldn't look away.

"I can't remember it ever being a different way," she sighed. "Do you want to come with me?" she stood, snuffing the half burned cigarette. "I can't be here now."

I followed her to the mudroom, my favorite room in the house, and watched her pull a giant winter coat over her skimpy wifebeater, which I was almost certainly convinced, was one of mine. She handed me my coat and slipped on boots that probably weren't hers, and dwarfed her shins.

"Careful," she held the door. I balanced my way down the two steps that creaked and groaned under so much hardware. I couldn't really see, but I pushed along the sidewalk into the darkness. You'd be alarmed at the things you do for the people you love.

Bella walked us towards a single light attached to a red wall. I looked at the stars and tried not to breathe, so they would remain unhidden. I heard a door creak as we approached the other galaxy and sun. Stars disappeared again out of jealousy and not my foggy breathing.

I followed her inside. It was a barn, and it burst with warmth. I watched her flip a switch, illuminating the giant shed on steroids. My eyes couldn't move fast enough, from the wall covered with tools that reminded me of medieval torture devices, all with pointy edges and teeth that I'm sure would kill anyone about twenty different ways, to the giant tractor in the middle, hood lifted, breathing oily fumes and snorting diesel into the air, to the assortments of various odds and ends that seemed to both fill and look pitifully empty in the cavernous place. When I turned around, finally, I found Bella, smiling and leaning against the door, still holding the lightswitch with one hand.

"Where are the cows?" I asked. She laughed. I realized how ridiculous that was as soon as I said it. But I still wanted to know. I'd never been on a farm. This was a distant setting where my mom grew up. And that was a prayer. Three breathes.

"Under us," she chuckled and pushed herself away from the wall that was holding her up, and walked to me.

I followed her as she slid past me, towards a deserted corner behind the tractor. A small bench was littered with tools, but more than that, it was covered in books. The walls burst forth in colors from faded pages of magazines, and drawings, and so much of everything I could have spent hours trying to find the beginning. Bella sat at a stool and traced her hands over the smaller, less dangerous looking tools.

"My grandpa taught me woodworking," she held a tool up that only looked semi-dangerous. "Did you know that I could weld too?" Her eyes stared at me, happily, confident, the Bella that stood in my bedroom so long ago and was a prophet. I just shook my head, because I realized that I had been in love with her since that instant. The fact that she could weld was just adding extra sprinkles to the delicious sundae that was this girl who loved me back. "I can," she nodded, twice, looking back at the tool in her hand. "Did you know that I can birth a calf too?" she smiled again. "I was afraid of the dark until I was about fifteen," she whispered, not letting me answer her last question. "I like your apartment, because the city lights are like a nightlight." She set the tool on the desk and stared at the walls.

I watched her, not sure where to file this information. I had no questions for her, because for some reason I didn't think any were important. It was foreign, to not need answers. Everyone needs answers. We need answers so much, we ask ourselves pointless questions every day, a million times a second, because questions are scary. What could be worse than finding out exactly what you want to know?

"I like when you think," she pushed her hair from her face with the sleeve of the coat, her hands stuck inside somewhere as it engulfed her, just like the shed, just like the darkness did to the porchlight. Some things are meant to engulf, and some are meant to be engulfed. "That picture in my book, I like that one the most," she sighed. "I can see the neurons firing at light speed, and I'm jealous, because I'm not sure there is anything I've ever thought about as hard as when you think about something as simple as how many packets of sugar for your coffee."

"It's not as fun as it looks," I gave her a smile. I wanted to tell her that she numbed them, she slowed time, she was the solution to Einstein's relativity. She laughed. Her eyes looked like fear and felt like doubt.

"I like when you look at me," Bella stopped moving her hands and we both were still. "I think I'm being forgotten every second, as the world keeps moving and moving and fumbling forward, but you look at me, and I feel like I'm seen, like it is okay that I am who I am, like I'm something." I watched her eyes glass in the dim, warm light. "I'm afraid you will stop looking at me," she managed to say between quivering lips. "And I'm terrified to be afraid of that."

I wanted to tell her that I saw her when I blinked, that if I ever got hit in the head and got amnesia, I would remember her. Some things get planted so deep in your heart, they surpass your mind. I wanted to tell her that, but you can say something like that and be taken seriously because it was lacking in sufficient medical proof and testing. But I knew it was true.

"And I'm telling you these stupid, insignificant things," she paused and looked away from me as her sleeve wiped a tear from her cheek, "because I don't want you to forget who you think I am." Her eyes were everywhere but with me, and I wanted to scream at her to look at me, but my voice was gone, because I was in love. "That girl, that's who I want to be, that girl is who I am because that girl is alive, and free, and full of thunder. You make me feel like I'm full of thunder and, and, and lightning and like I can fill the sky. You make me feel like the sky, and that's who I am." I watched her throat constrict and she shook her head, loosening rain on the poor villages of her knees. "Here, in the past, I don't feel like the sky. I feel like lightning bugs we used to catch in Mason jars," she shook her head. "We'd trap them, and they'd be our lanterns, and they'd blink in the fields like our own sets of constellations. And I felt like them, like I was the horn on Taurus, or Orion's shoe, or Gemini's liver connection. Just stuck in a jar, watching the world. And now you're realizing that I am just a lightning bug in a jar. And I'm afraid he'll make you forget when I was full of thunder, and when I was the sky." I watched her shoulders moving, shaking, like thunder was in her bones.

It was all too much. This day, was all too much. Life, is all too much, if you really think about it. So I didn't. I thought about Bella, and lightning bugs, and thunder. But that made my head twirl. I wondered if she was breaking up with me. I wondered what was wrong, because her metaphor was lost on me. I wondered if I looked at her in a creepy way, and she didn't like it. I was confused as to why she was crying. But most of all, I was confused at how I had ended up in this moment.

"I can't think when you're sitting there," I mouthed. I was thirsty. I felt like I was holding the ocean in my hands and stranded on a desert island with no fresh water. Bella looked at me like a summer shower. I wanted our universe. I wanted muffins. I wanted skin on skin. I wanted to be able to smile. I wanted her to have never made me love her.

"Can you just," I tried to breathe. "I love you." Six more half-breathes. "Fuck," I whispered and closed my eyes. "I think you're going to kill me," I shook my head and tried to wet my lips. It was all too much. Bella knew how to weld. Who the fuck knows how to weld? I didn't know how to weld.

"Just, fix me," I stared at her, my hands gripping into my knees until I tricked myself into believing that I could feel it. She stared back at me, jaw locking, chest heaving. "Just fucking fix me!" I screamed. "Make me stop."

I wondered where my voice came from. And that was a prayer. I wondered why things weren't easy and good at the same time. I wondered if this was hard. I wondered if she didn't want me anymore. And that made me Edward.

"I don't know," I tried to get air to my lungs but it wouldn't get there. It cycled in my nose and mouth, but never to my lungs. "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know how to not love you. I don't know." She didn't want me to love her, right? She could have told me anytime about her father. I was tired. The dogs were barking.

It was all too much. Life is all too much, if you really think about it, and I was stuck in the middle of a cram session. I wasn't sure what happened, what made her think that I didn't know she was like thunder and rain and everything and sky. I wasn't sure how she did know that she was as big as the sky to me.

"Me too," Bella was standing in front of me. "I'm scared too," she nodded, holding my head in her hands. "We're scared," she kept nodding, eight times. Eight times. Eight times. Eight times. Eight times. Eight times. "We're both afraid of different things," she explained. Her eyes were crying, but her voice was strong. Eight times. Eight times. Eight times. Eight times. Eight times. Eight times. "I'm sorry," she kept crying. I think I fell in love with her. Eight times. Eight times. Eight times.

"No," I shook my head against her hands. "No." I grabbed her hips. I shook against her nodding. I grabbed her cheeks so she would stop. "No. I love you." I kept perfectly still. Her head felt so small in my hands. I wondered what God felt like, to hold such small, but mighty things. Why did He put so much into such fragile boxes? Why did he send them around, unmarked, without warning labels? Why were we horridly breakable?

"Do you get that?" I stared at her, begging, pleading with her to understand what that meant. What that felt like for me to say. I wondered what God felt like, to be so completely misunderstood and ambiguous. "Just, let me do this." I nodded, eight times. I became aware that we were holding each other's faces. I didn't care. "I know I messed this part up, but, stop," I sighed. I was shaking. She was shaking. The whole fucking world is shaking, constantly, languidly, joltingly, quietly, screamingly, angrily, happily. We were shaking with it. "I can do this. I'm supposed to do this. I didn't mean to mess it up, but I can do this." Eight times. Eight times. Eight times. Eight times.

I needed to not think.

"I can't think with you sitting over there," I told her. I sounded angry. I was angry. She should know that didn't work. I am a mess. She should know. She should know that I am a mess, and that I can be good. I can be good for her. I can be good for me. Because this is what happiness was, and this was good. I was afraid. She should know. She should know that I am afraid because she knows me. I should know. I should know that she is afraid, because I am afraid and it would be rude to expect her to be brave. I could be brave. She loved me. And I could be brave. She should know. She should know that I loved her. She should know that I wasn't afraid of her. She should know. I should know. We should know. They should know. We knew. She knew. She knew, and she doubted. And that made me angry. She should know that I love her.

"If I let go, will you just sit here?" I wondered how crazy I sounded. I wondered how crazy God sounded. Bella nodded. Eight times. Eight times. Eight times. Eight times. I kept holding her. She kept holding me. I let go, because her eyes looked like roots. She held on still. Eight times. Eight times. We were a clinical dream. I hadn't felt this socially stunted in a long time. It felt foreign, and the foreignness itself felt wrong. She should know. She should know that she made me feel foreign. She should know that she looked at me like I was the sky, and that made me foreign to the past. She should know.

"I wasn't ready to be the one not afraid," I whispered. Her eyes didn't leave mine. I wondered what God felt like, to never beak eye contact. I blinked. "Need warning next time. I can't fucking think," I repeated.

Bella finally let go of my cheeks, and I pushed the giant coat from her shoulders and pulled her towards me. I could be an Edward coat. She was a Bella scarf. So she wrapped her arms around my neck, and I wrapped mine around her waist, and we were a universe. There weren't muffins, and that was the only thing I could keep thinking on repeat.

I stared at the wall, filled with colors and pages and explosions of Bella's brain all over them. My mom would have liked it. I liked it.

"Don't give up on me," I whispered, moving my thumbs along Bella's sweatpants hem. "You're a good thing. Don't let me mess it up, please?" I let all of the air out of my lungs. I didn't want anymore.

"Are you not listening?" Bella pulled away until my neck was cold. "I should be the one asking you that."

"I was afraid of something," I nodded, eight times. I hoped she wouldn't ask me what I was afraid of. And that was a prayer, I think.

"I am afraid of something, too," she nodded.

"Are you afraid that you're going to leave me one day?" I whispered.

"Very," she sighed.

For the first time in my life, I didn't feel nervous, or afraid, or anxious.

"I love you," I stated. I looked at my knees because her eyes felt like a galaxy was exploding in my chest, and that is scary. It's scary to have an existence defined. "I can feel you," I nodded, swallowing hard. This is what my father once felt like. This is what my bother once felt like. This is what Samson once felt. The way Marilyn Monroe once felt. I smiled, slightly, gently, despite myself and the universe and the galaxy that was swirling and swirling all over my body. "I feel like you walk through my veins." I swirled my thumbs like tiny atoms on her hip. My electrons were unstable. And small. Very tiny. This is what Cleopatra once felt. This is what Josephine once felt. This is what my grandfather once felt. This is what Yoko once felt. I looked at her lips, for a blink. I looked at her eyes, for forever. "I couldn't imagine you not being there. Let's just stay, okay?" This is what Johnny once sang about. This is what June once sang about. "I decide to be in love with you. Be in love with me." I looked at her shoulders. I looked at her collarbone.

"Okay," Bella nodded and put her fingers over my atoms so they stopped etching into her skin. I took a breath. She took a breath. We did that a lot. We took a few. We took a few more.

She put her head under my chin and nodded a few more times.

I wondered about genetics, and just how much of my father was in me. I wondered how much of his metaphor was his father's and his father's and his fathers. I wondered where the fuck I was going.

I wondered about the formula to bisect three derivatives. I thought about the perfection in Pi. I thought about C major scales.

I had my moment of perfect peace, and would be content to keep that one as such forever. If, as I truly believe, people are allowed one bit of peace and harmony with God and the Sky and the stars and the universe, and absolutely nothing. One moment of equilibrium. This would be mine.

Which made it better, though, was that this was the saddest and happiest anyone has ever been in the world.

And I lived all of those thoughts in one blink.


	18. The War and the Peace

** I don't own.  
/obvi.**

**Chapter Eighteen: The War and the Peace**

_And she'll wake up in a cold sweat on the floor  
next to a family portrait drawn when you were four  
and beside a jar of two cent coins that are no good no more,  
she'll lay it aside._

_Older father, weary soul, you'll drive  
back to the home you made on the mountainside  
with that ugly, terrible thing  
these papers for divorce  
and a lonely ring.  
__Sit on your porch-  
pluck your strings._

_And you'll find somebody you can blame.  
And you'll follow the creek that runs into the sea.  
And you'll find the Peace of the Lord. _

"I used to pretend she was like a superhero," Bella whispered as she shifted her weight and turned her hip more on its side, conquering my right side. I felt straw poking into my back, but it felt warm, and oddly comfortable, plus I was already down here, so I hugged her a little tighter and enjoyed the smell of hay and perfume. It was hard to breathe, but sometimes it always is, so I didn't care about another breath; at least not for the moment. Sometimes moments don't need air. I wondered if there were ever minutes that I went without breathing. I wondered about how amazing it was that the most important part of our activities, the innateness of breathing, we did without noticing, so oblivious to it, that we probably went long periods of time without doing it. And that was good.

"It made it easier." Is it normal, to want to know every thought someone else is thinking? No, I didn't want to know her every thought, because for some reason, that felt wrong. But I wanted to understand.

I felt her fingers play with my sweater, trace the places where my ribs gapped. A nervous tick. She tangled them under my coat, like roots growing between cracks in a sidewalk. I liked how it felt; like how those trees in swamps and the Amazon looked, the ones that have roots that hold the tree up out of the water, and are a huge maze underneath the surface, winding and sifting deeper than any trees should ever be allowed. I liked that, her rooted in my ribs, with fishes swimming between my lungs. This is what Adam once felt.

I traced the protrusions at the base of her skull to the ones at the base of her neck, skimming my fingertips along her hairline. She bowed her head to give me more miles to walk. I watched as she tightened her leg around my thigh and sighed into my chest. I would have taken a bite of the apple too, if she asked.

"I still pretend," I assured her. She laughed quietly. It sounded like Ben Harper, and nodded approvingly from a dimly lit booth in back. "And those are parts of me that I'm not sure I will ever show you."

"Why?" she pulled herself closer and closer against my side. She felt like water, and my fingers wouldn't close. Maybe I was water. Maybe we were both water. Maybe things just don't work out. And that was a prayer.

"I'm not sure," I swallowed so hard that I'm pretty sure my Adam's apple broke my nose.

"Use your words," she lifted her head. Her eyes looked like Novocain. She had a dad that drank a lot. I wondered if it was better to not have one at all. I wondered how superfluous fathers were. "Nothing you could ever say could make me love you less." Her eyes coursed like heroin. I think we all have junkie veins for something. I think there is something beautiful in addiction.

"I can't," I shook my head and looked away. "That's just it. I can't. I don't have words." I opened my mouth to say more, but I couldn't; further illustrating my point. I searched her face for the right ones, but that just reminded me that I wanted to kiss her. A lot. I went to speak again. Three breaths. I slumped back and stared at the roof. I suddenly felt squished, and craving open sky. But even that scared me. If you think about it, the sky is the heaviest thing ever. There's so much of it, layered and stacked on top of everything, filling every space, cramming itself into the horizon and alveoli of the world.

"I think you have the opposite problem," she hid a tiny smile horribly. "You have too many words." I smiled too.

"I have too many words," I nodded. I wasn't sure which was worse; too many or too little words. Did anyone have the right amount?

She placed her head back on my chest. My arm was falling asleep, but I didn't care at all, because my hand was snaking dangerously along her Mason-Dixon line, and well on its way to invading her Confederacy. Southern hospitality and such. I wasn't sure if the fact that I was still relatively new to this, or the fact that every touch felt like the first time, but sneaking an inch more than proper company would deem appropriate made me feel that crushing feeling of having a crush. Love is paradoxical, right?

"You can tell me any of your words," she whispered as the roots seeped between familiar cracks in my anatomy. "And you can keep whatever ones you want, too. I don't plan on going anywhere." Her roots snaked around my spine, I think, weaving between every part of my body, cracking my periosteum and slithering into my marrow.

"I'm afraid you won't understand," I felt her hand advancing towards my Little Bighorn, calvary daintily untangling it's roots and skimming my stomach. I wondered if it was little. I wondered if I could make Custer keep his standing down. I wished there was a battle that had 'big' in it.

"I know," she nodded again.

"No, I mean, I'm afraid that you won't understand." I realized repeating it didn't do anything to actually get the point across. And that hurt. It physically hurt, and at that exact moment, my mind was straining between which to hurt about more; her hand near Bull Run or the hopelessness of never being comprehended.

"I know," she repeated. I wondered how many times we would do that until I felt like she understood. Maybe I would never think she did. Maybe I didn't understand.

It's horrible, to have this feeling like a cannonball barreling through your chest, but not coming out the front; like a universe is being created, like at one correct instant in the chaos that defines everything, the right things lined up at once, everything was extremely perfect, not one thing was out of place in the whole entire vastness of the unfathomable nothingness of the universe, of the box that holds the entire known conceived and unconvinced ideas, the somethings, the nothings, the everythings, every minuscule particle of dust was exactly where it needed to be at that exact moment, and everything just went to hell straight away not a second later. That perfect chaos, that explosion and expansion to fill up so much space, yet leave every corner completely empty, to be the paradox of all paradoxes, that hurt. Physically, it hurt my body. Universes exploded in my chests. Chaos was conquered then magnified. And all of that happened repeatedly. I had infinite nanoseconds of perfection, blinks in time, switches of lights, snaps of fingers; I lived them all, and all of them reminded me that maybe I would not be understood. Maybe I didn't understand.

"She isn't a superhero," Bella whispered. The universe sucked itself into a blackhole and sat in my spine, waiting to be misunderstood again, waiting for that one speck of dust to settle, waiting for that dog to stop barking, waiting for that sneeze to come. "She has a new family in Nebraska. I looked her up when I was sixteen. Rosalie and I drove there, told Charlie we were going to a concert." She toyed with my belt. It was an inappropriate time to sound the reveille. Stonewall, etc. It was hard to concentrate on what she was saying when she was dangerously close to valleying my Forge. She had to keep her hands busy. That was her thing. I tried to solve the quantum problem of accelerated quirks; formulas and numbers lined up behind my eyelids with each blink, then dissipated, then were reborn. And she played with my belt. I wish I could develop a gene mutation that made my nervous tick playing with her cupcakes.

"She is married. She has two kids. I have two other siblings. She owns a flowershop. Her husband is an accountant. A fucking accountant." Her fingers grew more agitated, no longer gracefully dancing with my buckle, but pulling it out, jamming it back in softly, quicker and quicker. Her hands shook slightly, tiny tremors along her veins, just below her skin. I wondered if she was having a universe created inside of her.

"I think she saw me. I mean, she looked me straight in the eyes, and I saw it. She knew." I grabbed her hand before she broke my belt. I wish I hadn't. I could have done with a broken belt. She left it midway to being undone when I flattened her hand and put it against my stomach and held it down with my own. I was all for storming my Normandy, I just didn't expect it to be as violent. "She turned away." I kissed her head and hoped the universe was done giving birth to itself.

It is easier to pretend they're superheroes.

"What about your dad?" I traced her wrist and knuckles. I saw numbers in her veins, gently pulsating along. I wondered if they would ever go away. And that was a prayer. I was disappointed they were there to stay, even on her skin.

"He's been drinking since the day she left, I think," she laughed a little. I wasn't sure if that was a proper response, and that made me smile. "I learned to stay out of the way." I thought about that, and felt the blackhole eat a little more of that universe. She did know.

"Other siblings?" I let her answer sit in the air.

"You'll meet my brother tomorrow," she sighed. "He's at a friend's house tonight. He gets out of the house as much as possible."

That seemed like something I should have known ahead of time.

"I can protect you, now," I nodded, needing to hear those words out loud probably much more than she did. "No one will hurt you. Not even me."

"That's an impossible promise," she shook her head, which I'm sure was accompanied by an eye roll.

"I don't make promises I can't keep," I explained, holding up my pinky for her to shake. "That's all I got."

"Can I promise the same thing?" she looked at me again.

"I guess," I shrugged, remembering that I had a right arm, but forgetting again because it was insanely asleep.

"Same," she hooked our fingers, smiling, forgetting everything that had just happened. I envied that; her ability to just move on, even if she actually hadn't. She could pretend like no one's business.

Her hips moved and covered me until she was straddling me suddenly. I prayed my battalion wouldn't form a line.

"I want to kiss you now, because my boyfriend just drove to see me for a surprise on Christmas, and he's here, right now, not my mom, not my dad, not my shitty past, or anything else. Just my boyfriend." She leaned forward and I would have smiled, had I not anticipated her mouth on my mouth. My hands found her Appomattox to discuss surrender at her hips. "Can I kiss you?" she breathed on my lips. I felt her elbows on my collarbones and her hands slipping into my hair. I wondered if I had ever heard a more ridiculous question.

So I answered her question by kissing her. I hadn't realized how much I missed doing that; kissing someone. Not just someone; Bella. I hadn't realized how much I missed kissing her. I also hadn't realized how much I needed her. Now I felt free, and like every particle that exists before existence was lined up, but in a good way, and we were exploding. And my hands moved to her ribs, rooting under her coat, my thumb meeting the concrete sidewalk boarder I was afraid to crack.

"I really want you," she whispered in my ear when my lips moved to her neck. And then we had lift off. Battle stations were go. I was set to siege her Merrimac. Bring my guns to her Tripoli. Fire that shot heard around the world.

She wanted me. I wanted her. She was right. I had too many words at this moment in time.

"Please insert an excuse to get out of this," I whispered as my lip was pulled between her teeth and my hands moved to cup her ass tighter. I didn't have a reason to not do it. I wanted to have one, because I didn't want her to hate me. Or herself. Or us. I guess I was afraid. I was very afraid.

"No," she stated stubbornly. "I'm sick of not doing what I want because I'm afraid." My logic was done. She looked at me with eyes like muskets, and lips that tasted like lead. I bit the bullet and moved my hands higher. Her eyes closed and her body arched slightly.

"What the hell is this?" Reverend Swan's voice seemed to echo and stream through each crack in the barn's walls.

I wanted to move my hands, but Bella's boobs felt really good, and for a second I forgot I had arms. I didn't even think to talk. I felt like I had just accepted a Trojan horse, and now my day was fucked to hell.

"I was contemplating having sex with Edward," Bella stated, quite boldly, considering my hands were still stuck at ten and two. I turned from staring at Reverend Swan with abject horror, until I was staring up at Bella's chin, pointed out in defiance, with abject horror.

I didn't know what to feel. Complete and utter fear, first based on the fact that Reverend Swan owned guns, and booze, and only Emmett knew where I was. Complete and utter excitement, based on the fact that I was probably one condom away from having sex with Bella. Which I didn't have, so sex probably wouldn't have happened. I made a giant mental note to get some asap. That might be presumptuous. Complete and utter fear. I was breaths away from having sex with my girlfriend for the first time. Every particle of nothingness except for one had lined up, and now we were left with this half-assed explosion that went horribly wrong. Complete and utter fear. That one was winning. Fear of Reverend Swan, fear of sex, fear of Bella.

"Just contemplating?" I asked. Fuck. Bella smiled at me. If I hadn't been already flat on my back, that smile would have seduced me right to my knees. I gulped.

"Nope," she shook her head, looking back at her father.

Right. That guy. I turned to see him, looking even more like a homicidal maniac, and if anything just as drunk as when he went to sleep. This time though, his eyes were narrowed on me, tiny little points of daggers dug and stabbed into my skin. His jaw looked like stone. I wondered if he would break his teeth with how tight he was coiled.

"I was actually set on it," Bella sat up a little, effectively taking her boobs from my hands.

Right. Those things. I have nothing bad to say about them. They still looked like heaven.

I wanted to say that I didn't have a condom, but that seemed like the worst possible addition to the conversation.

"Get inside. Now," Reverend Swan managed to push out through locked lips, snarling like a rabid beast.

"No," Bella stated. There was the stubbornness. I wish I could make my hands go down, but they stood tall; a mold of where we had been not a minute before, my whole body frozen. I wondered if she was using me to piss her father off. I wondered if I was okay with that. Mostly I didn't want to think about that.

"Get. Back. In. The. House," he gritted. I felt sorry for his dentist. I felt sorry for Bella. I suddenly felt sorry for him, as well. No one should have to see their daughter mounting a guy in the hay.

I cleared my throat and tried to sit up. Bella looked back at me, remembering she was still just layers away from playing Cuban Missel Crisis with out naughty bits.

"Just go," I nodded. "I don't want any trouble, or to be the cause of something." I knew we weren't going to have sex tonight. I think Bella knew, even before her father arrived. But now she was pretending just to upset him. You don't poke the bear. You don't miss the bear either, when you have your shot, and she was taking hers.

"No." The stubbornness was both most infuriating and adorable thing on her.

"You already caused enough, son," Reverend Swan walked over and jerked Bella up by her elbow. I waited for a kick or something from his heavy boots. I heard Bella grunt in pain. He pushed her unsteadily towards the door. "Get in the house. You're just like her," he spat.

"Maybe," Bella agreed. I could see her eyes as I pulled myself into my wheelchair, and they absolutely killed me. "Maybe I am like her. I'm okay with that. The lesser of two evils. Anything is better than being like you." I saw the reverend grow thirteen feet tall. I saw his hand wind up after the back of it had already made contact with her jaw.

"Leave her alone!" I was shouting before I could stop myself. "Don't fucking touch her."

"But fornication, and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not once be named among you, as becometh saints...For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God," he roared, standing over Bella.

"The soul of the Lord hates those who love violence," Bella whispered, back straightening. "The last thing I'm worried about is my salvation. I'm just trying to survive; to live. I'm sick of everything you've made me become. I'm sick of everything you've done to fuck me up. And I give no fucks about feeling obligated to you anymore." I saw the red turning darker on her cheek as a bruise was already forming. I saw blood on her lips.

I wondered how we got here; a triangle of animosity. Bella stood, glaring, tears wetting her cheeks, yet not crying. Her father, a man I was realizing I knew nothing about, glaring right back, confusion streaking every unsteady sway of his feet and darting of his eyes. Me, scared as all fuck, and finally realizing that I knew absolutely nothing about who Bella was. And that was terrifying.

"I was afraid," Bella shook her head now. "I didn't invite Edward here because then he'd have to meet you. And I'm ashamed of what I come from. I'm ashamed of everything in my life I think. And so what if I want to fuck him? So. Fucking. What! I love him. I give no more fucks about anything. I'm not like her," Bella whispered as she wiped away her cheeks, wincing when she pressed her left one. "Because I'm standing here telling you that I feel big. I feel fucking huge! when I'm with him, and nothing could make me want to run away from that. He gives me a spine." I felt proud, I think. "You probably won't remember this in the morning," she sighed. "But we're done. I quit."

She turned and walked out a second later.

I followed, leaving a very frustrated reverend in our wake.

By the time I reached her she was halfway back to the house. By the time I reached her, she was crying.

So I held her hand.


End file.
